


The Town By The Empty Lake

by OldMagpie (MagpieMorality)



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Lovecraft Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Dodgy Vintage Psychology and Psychological Treatments, Drug Use, F/F, Fictional Religion & Theology, Found Family, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Lovecraftian Opinions On Artists, M/M, Murder/Ritualistic Sacrifice, No Period Typical Homophobia/Racism/Sexism, Past Character Death, Period Typical Mental Health Attitudes, Psychological Horror, Recovery and Self-Improvement, Religious Cults, This is my fictional town and I get to decide what they're prejudiced about, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unspecified Setting, cosmic horror, implied/referenced suicidal ideation, not historically accurate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 02:01:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 89,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29217627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MagpieMorality/pseuds/OldMagpie
Summary: The driver turns the car and peels off with only one last mournful glance at Nile and suspicious glare at the town. He drives away significantly faster than they had approached, Nile notices, almost like he is running away.Nile is not prone to flights of fancy. She thinks this might be the most accurate of her strange thoughts so far.When Associate Professor James Copley receives a strange letter out of the blue from a man he does not know, he sends Nile Freeman to Europe to answer it. Armed with tenacity, curiosity and a brilliant mind, Nile sets off to find the mysterious Booker in the remote mountain town of Elvagyodask.She will soon discover that he is not all that awaits her there.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 49
Kudos: 47
Collections: The Old Guard Big Bang





	1. Prologue - Nile's Arrival

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few 'quick' notes before we begin! 
> 
> This is a fictional town set somewhere vague in Central Europe, at some point vaguely during the 1920s. The history and culture and religion of the town and context are deliberately ambiguous and not meant to evoke any one influence, although the religion is recognisably some unspecified denomination of Christianity with mentions of the Bible. I looked at the possible period-typical attitudes at the time and essentially picked out the only ones I wanted and said fuck off to the rest, so there is no racism, homophobia or sexism in the story. Any and all conflict will come from other contexts entirely. 
> 
> This is a also a spooky thriller of a story. There will be death and violence and there are dark and unpleasant themes throughout as befits the setting and story, but the horror remains mainly in the atmosphere and the eternal, burning question - Is it In My Head or is it Something Else? The characters are imperfect and informed by the information they might have had at the time and some of the language around mental health is going to be a little indelicate. Chapters will not have additional warnings, so if you are at all sensitive to anything tagged above then be careful, I have tried to tag what I can but specific things might have slipped by and I apologise if that is the case (this baby is a BIG BABY so I hope you can forgive me). I also highly recommend finding some good background music to listen to while reading - [Cosmics, The Town By The Empty Lake](https://open.spotify.com/embed/playlist/6rVeJAtHsg1eHM1CIDJk2v) is the Spotify playlist I used while writing.
> 
> As for the ending... I promised the first readers of this many months ago when I started the journey of writing it that the ending would be 'happy' in the sense that it would hopefully satisfy and be appropriately uplifting, certainly not an 'everyone dies' type of story! What that means exactly? Well that would be telling. 
> 
> All my thanks and outpourings of affection will be in the epilogue end notes. 
> 
> From this author to anyone out there actually sitting down to read this; good luck, keep hydrated/fed, get comfortable and I hope you find yourselves adequately and spookily entertained...

The car rumbles along the dirt and rock road, trees shadowing overhead like grasping fingers. Nile shivers, drawing her coat firmly around her in the chilly backseat. The driver does not glance back. He has not glanced back in the last hour since they left the train station, focusing dully ahead and following the single road through the oppressive forest to the town that awaits her, nestled in the mountains of whatever central European country she is in now. Nile is not even confident she could say for sure; she has passed through so many in the week ( _weeks?_ ) since leaving the university in Arkham. She thinks she remembers some of the port in France, maybe flashes of the many, many trains she has been on and off since, but it all blurs into a smear of brown and grey-ish green. The whole place has felt dull and uninviting, lacking the edge of cordiality that Massachusetts had offered to balance out the dour weather and too-similar seasons.

If she was prone to flights of fancy she might say it felt as though Europe does not want her here.

Nile is not prone to flights of fancy.

In fact that was more or less the reason she had been hand-selected by Associate Professor James Copley to undertake this research trip to the forebodingly named Elvagyodask. There had been an older name for the town but it was long since lost, colloquialisms and local dialects and slang taking over until the facts of the place had irrevocably changed. Nile knows what the moniker apparently means; she had done her research diligently before departing the States to travel to it - _a place you desire to leave_. She had scoffed then but really it seems perfectly apt now that she is actually on the final approach to the place. Why anyone can bear to remain living here is beyond her, and she will be more than happy to complete her research with the strange friend of Professor Copley's and get the hell back out again.

She shivers again and resettles in the uncomfortable seat, looking out of the window. More trees chug on by, the engine roaring along with the suspension on the loose ground. It sounds like a death-rattle, or the tumble of bones against each other.

What a ridiculous notion.

"How much further, please?" she calls forward to the driver, raising her voice above the cacophony. The driver ignores her or cannot hear. She tries again. This time it is quite clear he is ignoring her and she scowls, slumping back and resigning herself to a long and unpleasant final leg to her journey. At least soon enough she will be able to stop for a while. 

* * *

Elvagyodask lies on the side of a distinctly foreboding looking lake, in the bowels of a small mountain chain. Once it had been busy; a fishing town sending wares up and down via riverboat, but that river is long gone, dried up or dammed, cutting off the best escape the inhabitants had. The road remains, uncared for and infrequently traveled. There are potholes everywhere and one would be forgiven for expecting a great wall or gate to keep people out, and a ghost town within.

There is no such wall but the driver stops the car at the edge of the forest as though there were. They jerk suddenly to a halt and Nile nearly falls forwards, yelping in surprise. He mutters something in the local language and she frowns, before he repeats himself in English that Nile actually does understand, despite the thickness of his accent. 

"We have arrived. Leave and walk the rest."

"Excuse me? We have definitely _not_ arrived-” 

But he shakes his head adamantly and refuses to meet her eyes. Nile huffs, grumbling under her breath about superstitious Europeans and their weird customs while she drags herself into the cold air and pulls her suitcases from the trunk. The driver does not make a single move to get out and help and she indulges in a few swears before lifting her chin, putting her shoulders back and preparing to march confidently into town. 

Just before she can set off the window winds down. The driver's hand shoots out and startles her, and in his palm a little doll is held out. It seems to be made of cotton thread and perhaps a large splinter; the whole thing is barely the size of her thumbnail twice over. He waits with achingly earnest eyes until she drops one case and takes it from him. 

"Do not lose it. Under your head when you sleep, for protection, in your pocket when you walk, in the day," he says slowly and clearly, waiting for her nod. She hates that the serious tone makes her spine tingle with cold dread but she was raised properly so instead of laughing it off she accepts the gift. 

The driver turns the car and peels off with only one last mournful glance at Nile and suspicious glare at the town. He drives away significantly faster than they had approached, Nile notices, almost like he is running away. 

Nile is not prone to flights of fancy. She thinks this might be the most accurate of her strange thoughts so far.

"Well here we go," Nile says aloud, aiming to bolster her confidence. The thinness of her own voice in the quiet serves to do the exact opposite, but Nile has never been one to quit. She places the doll into the breast pocket of her coat and picks up her suitcases again and strides on down the road, winding along the side of the lake and into the town that is to be her home for the duration of the trip. 

And thus Nile arrives in Elvagyodask. She already desires to leave. 


	2. Nile in Elvagyodask

The overwhelming impression Nile gets of Elvagyodask upon arrival is _grey_. The streets are grey; the buildings are grey; the lake is grey and the sky is grey. Even the people are grey, wandering around in simple, practical clothing without any frills or colours other than that damned grey.

Perhaps Nile is being a bit harsh, but she is cold and hungry and had not worn these boots intending to walk very far today. The rough road has all but scoured off the soles - it has turned out to be deceptively far from the edge of the forest to the first of the buildings squatting by the lake. Her ankles hurt more than anything; the small heel is practical on most surfaces but stone is not one of them, and she passes some time composing a strongly-worded letter to the manufacturer to make herself feel better.

The first few buildings Nile passes are little more than huts, storage for rotting and empty crates that - from the faint designs still visible on the side of a couple - must have once held fish. The air starts to stink of it before long, a thick and fetid smell that Nile tastes in her throat as much as feels in her nose, but she refuses to wince or wrinkle her nose. The way the distant dockhands turn to look at her and the dead eyes of what fish there _are_ in the crates seem to stare as well, reminds her of going to the bar with the professors and being ordered a glass of whiskey. They had watched her too then, the old and pompous men of the university, expecting her to fail the test. It had not been respect that she had earned by downing half in one go with a stony expression, but they had not laughed either. And the dockhands and fish don’t laugh now. The figures go back to their work and she feels just a tad more confident as she continues her walk.

Her feet follow the winding road, curving alongside this corner of the lake. It rises away from the water, thankfully, turning in an incline as wooden structures start to rise below, gangplanks and walkways with scattered workers on top like too-few raisins on her mother's oatmeal cookies. At least the smell is not quite so strong, but the town somehow manages to appear looming and even _less_ welcoming than from afar now that she is within it. The streets are built on steep angles, zig-zagging jaggedly up the side of the valley, and towering high above is the largest of the houses; a monstrous black thing with thin slits of windows and altogether too many narrow towers spiking off into the sky. Elsewhere is her workplace for this visit; the library, combined with the town hall in a long building that had been loosely described to Nile as 'you’ll know when you see it', but from ground-level Nile cannot spot anything to match the description yet.

When it becomes clear she is going to need some directions rather than simply aimlessly wandering in the hopes of finding her destination, Nile heads for the nearest building. It seems from the outside to be less of a home and more of an office, jutting out over the edge of the lake to oversee the docks. _Perhaps a foreman or supervisor of some kind will be within to help_ , she thinks. She hopes so. Her ankles _really_ hurt.

Her suitcases sit firmly on the ground and she hikes her skirts up with one hand, eyeing the mud that glistens off the side of the road, between her boots and the door. Oh well. If they don’t hold out the muck and damp then that’s just another thing she can add to the irate letter of complaint. 

"Hello? Anyone in?" she calls, hoping the words are understandable even in English. She knocks as well, two echoing raps of her knuckles. Along the street someone leans out of a door, and down on the docks she sees a few heads turn her way. Nile shivers, and lifts her chin, about to knock again when a foot lands heavily beside her own, splattering her shins in mud, and a hand clamps down vise-tight around her wrist. Nile is proud to say she only sucks in a sharp breath and whips her head around to face the newcomer.

Two flinty, reddened-but-pale eyes squint back. They are set in a lined, stern face, attached to a woman. The woman spits something back in the local dialect that Nile cannot understand, and then spits - actually spits this time - and bares her teeth. "Who are you? What do you want?" she repeats in blessed English, voice slightly slurred and less strongly accented than the driver’s.

Nile stares at her. Then she remembers her manners. "Nile Freeman, ma'am. I’m looking for directions. Just arrived in town." Perhaps her strained smile betrays her because the woman gives her a healthily skeptical look and glances around them quickly, before making a tutting sound and letting go quite suddenly.

"Follow me," she says, turning around and walking as though she means Nile to follow. Well, it seems as good a plan as any, so Nile grabs her cases and chases after her, all the way to a dingy, thin house on the other side of the street. "In, quickly," the woman mutters.

"Should I remove my coat?" Nile asks, graced by another dour look from the woman before simply being instructed to follow again. She shrugs to herself and leaves it on, traipsing through the house and dropping her cases in a little kitchen at the back that is no more cared for than the hall, only somewhat more lived in. The woman sits heavily at the rickety table taking up most of the room and pours a glass of unidentifiable alcohol from an already-open bottle, drinking it quickly and refilling the glass straight away.

She keeps squinting at Nile until the silence just has to be broken. "Alright, ma'am, can you help me or am I supposed to watch you drink all day?"

"You just arrived." It isn’t a question but Nile answers it anyway.

"Yes I did. From-"

"Voluntarily? You came here by choice?"

"I- yes? How else would I come here?"

"Not by choice."

"Well, yes, obviously, but-"

"Directions, you said. Where is it you want to go?" the woman asks.

Nile purses her lips, pushing down her rising frustration. "To the library. A man named Booker- _oh!_ "

They both jump up, cursing, trying to correct and contain the spill. The woman looks pink in the face and not just from drinking, which - coupled with her instinctive full-body twitch at the mention of Nile's mysterious contact - makes for an interesting reaction. The part of Nile's brain usually reserved for making connections between obscure references in old texts and dusty artefacts latches onto it. "So you know Booker then?" she asks bluntly, watching closely for any more clues. The woman stills and then continues aggressively wiping the table with a rag, avoiding her eyes. "Well, can you tell me where to go to find him?"

"Where else but that godforsaken library?" the woman responds and the rasping anguish in her voice chills Nile but softens her too. She is no bleeding heart but she does not like to see people in pain. The eyes that finally turn to her as the woman collapses back into her chair only compound the effect. "He really called you here?"

"Yes ma'am. Well, he sent a letter to one of my higher ups at the University. I was sent to respond to his request. It has taken me a damn long time to get here so I would appreciate keeping the last bits of my travel short and simple. Where can I find him?"

"Library's on the north side. Only building with green stone, you’ll-"

"Know when you see it," Nile finishes with her. The woman nods slowly. Well, that is one little mystery solved. At least three more to go: what Booker's message had been about; what happened to this strange woman; and what the hell is wrong with this place. Nile looks forward to the others she is almost certain she will pick up along the way. "Alright, very well. Thank you for your help…?" She waits for the woman to answer her, which she does only after a pointed delay.

"Andy."

“Andy. Thank you again,” Nile nods her thanks and takes her leave, picking up her luggage and stepping outside. Andy - a strange name for a strange woman, but Nile will not judge - catches her attention just over the threshold with a clearing of her throat. "If Booker lets you down then you can find me here or in the Coffin. Bar, few streets up and take a left,” she adds when Nile frowns, confused.

"Alright, understood. Should I be expecting that to happen?"

Andy's mirthless laugh answers that before her words do. "Couldn’t trust him if your life depended on it. Be careful Miss Freeman, and not just of him. We have not had anyone new in town in a long time. Just- be careful."

Nile raises her chin and nods sharply, just once. "I can handle myself well enough, I assure you."

"Not like this," Andy murmurs, looking at her with eyes that are crystal clear, baring the depths of a grief Nile cannot comprehend.

She swallows thickly and nods more agreeably. "I will see you around then," she says, and then resumes her walk of the streets, fighting the urge to speed up and run, keeping her gait steady and sure. As she leaves the house behind her she hears Andy whisper one last thing but refuses to turn to ask what it was, aiming for the library and the man that awaits her inside it. All in all she feels only _slightly_ worse than before she had met Andy.

If she lies to herself, that is.

* * *

Sébastien le Livre was a man with noble goals and a drive to do some good in the world. He was dedicated to his work in research and using that research to improve the lives of others. He was a man who would have - and has - packed up his life and moved to the middle of nowhere because his old friend asked, desiring his expertise on the occult and his understanding distinguishing fact from fiction, and fake from forgery. He was a man who would do anything for that friend - to any end - setting aside his own sanity in the pursuit of answers to help. In pursuit of a solution that was not there to find.

He was a man who had been there for his friend, his family, until the very end.

Booker is not that man. Booker is a man more used to excuses than explanations. He has armed himself for years with an answer for everything, and yet nothing changes; nothing resolves; and nothing ever gets any _better_. He hides within the walls of a library he knows the every text of, but he cannot quite make use of that knowledge to any end, often wandering the stacks like a ghost, feverishly reading and rereading in the hopes that this time he will find what he needs.

He is also a man well acquainted with laudanum and the delightful effects thereof, employing the heady drug as needed to calm his racing thoughts and unsettled mind, soothing his dreams into a tentatively peaceful darkness. Because Booker had let them down and Sébastien had died an ignoble death at his hands, and the library and town have mercilessly eaten him whole. So here he resides, in the belly of the beast, trapped and silently scratching the sides in vain for a way out.

Or maybe just a way to end his own suffering, for surely he cannot fix the mistakes he has made. That is beyond any man's power, let alone that of a half-starved opium addict with no prospects and hardly any grasp left on life.

Booker only vaguely remembers sending a message to James Copley. The memory is hazy with unreality, lost to the vague dreams of the laudanum he has in recent years taken to with more and more desperation. He has the faint impression of grabbing a piece of letter-writing paper from the old study and scrawling something out, but could not confidently say what had urged him to write.

Perhaps it had been the niggling thought that what he was missing - what he had been missing for nearly twenty long, torturous years - might not in fact be in his library at all but elsewhere in the world. It was strange though; that thought had occurred to him plenty of odd times in the past. He felt it knock on his mind whenever he walked past the study, still scattered and strewn with his notes, the paper fading and starting to curl at the edges. One of those notes Booker knew bore the mention of a University; of a student who at the time had been conducting his own research into local customs in the area. The student in question had given up and his research had been left incomplete, but the simple fact remained that Booker had always thought there might be someone else who could help him with his work. Maybe the impending anniversary of the end to it all had finally spurred him on to tug on that lead? He had always regretted leaving it untouched. 

Whatever the reason might be, Booker had written - begging for help or documents or simply thoughts from this Copley, hoping against hope that the man might still be at the distant Miskatonic University. He thinks he had sent it with the help of a cleaner from the town hall next door, whom he had unfortunately frightened quite a bit when he had loomed out of the shadows one night with the paper clasped in his hands, eyes large from the laudanum.

He had not once expected to hear anything back.

That was Booker's curse in a nutshell; to try and try and never succeed, to clutch at straws just out of reach, damned and doomed forever to wander the library that had sealed the fate of all of them. Searching and hoping - _and the hope was the worst part, the small but insistent thought that he could not give up because there was always a_ chance - and lingering like a bad smell when what he should have, and yet never could have done was leave quickly and quietly, abandoning Elvagyodask and his ghosts behind him.

To say he is surprised to hear someone knocking on the interior door to the library one late afternoon several weeks later, would be an understatement in the grossest sense. The pull of the drug still in his system makes him groggy, flailing up from the sunken chaise longue that has long since become his bed, and he pauses to listen to the sound. Booker is not even entirely sure it’s real, and he knows well enough not to trust improbable things.

But the knock comes again, louder - accompanied by the strident voice of a young woman.

Calling his name.

"One minute!" Booker calls back, trying to make himself presentable as quickly as possible. His clothes are unsalvagably unkempt but he is at least fully dressed, so he straightens his cravat and pushes his hair back a few times, grimacing at the thick oiliness of it, and staggers out to meet his visitor. "I apologise, I’m quite unused to guests…" he starts, trailing off with wide eyes at the strange sight that greets him.

It is indeed a young woman, and not a local by her dress. She arches an eyebrow at him critically, glancing over his disheveled appearance. She clears her throat and replies in distinctly American-flavoured English. "I was supposed to meet with Booker?"

There is the strangest twitch on his face. It might even be the urge to smile politely, an old habit, but Booker has not done that for such a long time that he hardly recognises it. He nods instead and offers back her own language. "I am he. But I confess, I did not know I was expecting you. Perhaps you could explain?" And then, the darnedest thing - she tells him that his letter had been her summons, explains that by some miracle James Copley _had_ received it at Miskatonic, and _had_ sought to answer his request.

Unfortunately they appear to have misinterpreted whatever he must have written within by a large margin, and have sent this poor young woman halfway around the globe to aid him in his abandoned investigation, when all Booker had in actual fact wanted to do was eliminate the chance of missing a few half-written sources that would be too late to help even if they _did_ exist.

"- so I’ll be able to help with all of that, and then perhaps there will be a chance to conduct a few interviews with yourself and any other older locals as well while I’m here," the young woman finishes. Booker has not been listening. It’s a frequent enough problem for him - getting lost in his labyrinthine thoughts - but generally there is no one around to be inconvenienced by it.

"Ah," he sucks air in through his teeth, holding an arm out to direct her through to the staff room behind the reception desk. "My apologies, my manners are sorely lacking. Please, sit. And start again from the beginning, my old mind is not what it used to be."

He removes some precariously balanced book-towers from the armchairs opposite so that she might sit comfortably and toes a few empty glass bottles of various sizes under the chaise out of sight as he takes his own place on top of the rumpled blankets of his improvised bed. She seems very unimpressed by his living arrangements, but that is more than fair. Booker himself is so on a daily basis, when the laudanum wears off and he is faced again with the reality of the dregs of his life. He has sunk very low in the depths of his despair and it does not feel particularly unwarranted. Not when the memories and dreams and haunting screams - _where is she what have we done what have you done_ \- in his head come calling, knocking on his fragile mind like rocks on a rickety wooden shelter. Thick and fast they come, worsening now that the twenty year anniversary is upon him until they are all but constant. And so follows his use of the laudanum; the perfect shadow to his shades - his desperate defense against his own mind’s attack.

His fingers itch to find the latest bottle and force it all away but the young lady is watching and has come to see him - _him!_ \- and he has to be attentive.

_Pay attention Booker._

"Professor Copley sent me. He said you mentioned his old thesis and some very interesting things. Local folklore and occultism, my area of study. The Professor would have written back first, only you seemed so very desperate and the timing worked to allow me the trip. So here I am. Nile Freeman at your service Mr. Booker."

Booker stares and feels the threads of his thoughts start to stray again, but catches himself, swaying forward with the physical effort it takes to redirect his mind to the current moment. "Just Booker is fine, Miss Freeman."

"Then you may call me Nile. I find formalities so very stifling, do you not agree?"

"Nile." Her smile says he has done something right and his lips twitch with that old impulse again. He inclines his head when they do not quite make it into a smile of their own. "I confess, I do not remember what I wrote. And I’m not sure there's much you can do, here, with what I’m facing. _Working on_. What I _was_ working on."

Nile eyes him suspiciously, and _good_ because she will need that suspicion if she wants to survive this stay in Elvagyodask and make it home again. He wonders if she will. The last visitors from outside still have not, after all - both lost to the darkness and depths of things beyond the ones they poison themselves with on the outside. Booker tries again to smile to assuage the frown starting to creep onto Nile's face, but even a thin stretch of his stiff lips aches too much to hold.

"I see," she says slowly, eventually. "Well then what is it I _can_ do for you, Booker? I came all this way and I should like to get something out of it all. Perhaps you could tell me if you were trying to research some actual occurrence or a theoretical one, or if it was a more psychological interest you were following? I may be able to make use of it in a future thesis."

"Oh… I suppose a combination?" Booker hesitates and he feels the heavy urge to reach for the laudanum. Is he really going to have to explain to this young woman, fresh arrival to The Town You Desire To Leave, what happened here all those years ago?

There’s just something about her that compels him to.

But he cannot simply blurt it all out. He has spent an inordinate amount of effort, after all, in burying it away, despite its insistence at remaining fresh and agonising and remembered. He shifts in his seat and tries to figure out how to turn the tap on the truth without unleashing a flood.

"There was an incident here in town, almost two decades ago now. It resulted in the-" his breath hitches but he carries on. "The disappearance and most likely death of a young woman. It coincided with a rise in local cultish behaviour." _Careful Booker do not drown under the weight of remembering all the words all the meetings all the late night discussions going round and round sat clustered in a tiny cosy living room voices laughing and rolling over each other the wine was rich and Quỳnh and Andy sat so close together and-_ "And at the time it seemed much akin to the shared hysteria of the witch trials, Salem and its ilk."

"'At the time'?" Nile parrots immediately, quick as a flash. She’s a sharp one, it will be both wonderful and terrifying to spend time in her presence, Booker realises. "It was something you experienced personally?"

He sits back against the sloping, half-length backrest of the chaise, feeling exhausted. "It was."

Nile sits forward as he moves back and the balance of the room shifts. All of a sudden Booker is being studied, interrogated, rather than explaining the situation to a curious newcomer. "Did you know the woman who died?"

"I did," he replies hoarsely.

"How were you involved?"

"I was- working the case. A favour to a friend; the best, albeit the only, Detective this town has ever had. Well, we were once friends, at least. I don’t suppose she would grant me the title now.” He twitches away from the thought, thumbing between his eyebrows and tearing his eyes away from the tempting bottle just peeking out from under the coffee table between them. Nile is looking at him with a calm, pleased certainty.

"You mean Andy, do you not?” she says when he blinks at her.

"I… Did. How did you-"

"We met earlier. Now, you were saying-"

"Wait, please," he begs, squeezing his eyes shut. His head has started to throb in earnest, the speaking and the withdrawal and the memories all crowding in and battering on wood again. Booker squints, peering at Nile's confused face. "I’m sorry, Nile, but I need… A break."

"But we've only just started!" she protests. "I should get my notepad out, and-"

"Please." This time he isn’t begging, but his voice is not commanding. It is small and withered, like the rest of him. "I must beg your pardon but I…"

Nile looks at him and Booker avoids her gaze. She glances at the way his hands shake and he keeps licking his lips, brow furrowed in pain, and then it seems that all of a sudden she sees, truly sees, the room they are in.

Up she stands and Booker cannot find the energy to even feel ashamed. "I will return tomorrow morning first thing. I suppose I will be without your help finding lodgings?" It is all Booker can do to sit silently and not lunge for the laudanum. Nile, to her credit, does not audibly scoff at his non-response but casts him a look that conveys the sentiment all the same. She takes her bags and leaves quickly then, and he waits only to hear the door click shut before he tumbles off the chaise and reaches for the bottle under the table. The drops take hardly any time at all to placate his demons once again, sending him down to rest right there on the threadbare carpet. He closes his eyes and lays his cheek on the pattern of it, and tries to bury the women dancing together in a tiny front room, lit by the warm light of a flickering fire, so deep in his head that they will never resurface again.

It is a vain attempt but he has no other choice but try, or drown.

* * *

Nile is none too pleased with one Mr. Booker so far. The man clearly has some rather pressing issues he should be dealing with but instead squats inside the library, self-medicating and writing strange letters about mysterious deaths. 

She calms down somewhat when she leaves the library behind, hurrying down the green steps. The stone looks slimy and slick, but it grips just fine under her boots.

"Damn," Nile groans. Her boots. And for that matter; where is she going to go now? "I suppose Andy was right, in a way," she says under her breath, glancing back at the library. There is nothing for it. Better to just retreat to the woman - Detective apparently - and ask for help finding lodgings somewhere since the library is quite clearly a bust.

It is starting to grow dark when she retraces her footsteps to Andy's house, rapping on the door and predictably receiving no reply. To the bar it is then. Nile is starting to grow tired of lifting her chin and walking decisively off with each new heading, but she will abide a couple more if they lead to a bed she can collapse into. What was it Andy had said? A few streets up and take a left... The bar was called something odd, the Graveyard or Corpse, or-

"The Coffin," she reads aloud, peering at the dim, almost derelict sign down one of the left-hand side streets and heading towards it. It creaks as it swings and the lights on inside the building as she approaches seem sickly and weak coming through the grimy windows. More welcoming than the cold street and dark houses lined up everywhere she looks though, and when the door opens and someone staggers outside to vomit into the road there are audible voices inside that speak of some actual goddamn life in this strange place. Nile gracefully avoids the still-heaving man and nudges the door open with her elbow and knee, shimmying inside without losing her luggage as the heavy door swings back into place with a solid sounding _thunk_ behind her.

Against cliché; the room does not fall silent when Nile enters. There are a few glances but most of the occupants of the tightly clustered tables are busy talking, identical large pints of heady ale in front of almost everyone. Some do frown at her, or start to mutter to each other, but since no one makes a move to do anything unsavoury, Nile moves further inside. She pulls up next to the bar at the end and turns to look around, craning her neck, trying to spot Andy somewhere.

The barkeep greets her in the local dialect and Nile replies with a slightly embarrassed ‘hello’. His lips purse but he shrugs and taps his fingers on the bar. He seems harmless enough, a grim-faced man with no real opinion on her appearance either way, if she’s reading him right.

"Do you want to drink, lady?" he asks slowly. 

Nile smiles gratefully. "Yes, thank you. A club soda please."

"We do not have that. Cider, we have. With water it is less strong."

 _That is not remotely similar,_ she wants to say, but chooses not to pick this battle. "That will be fine thank you." It gets nudged over to her in a ceramic pint mug, which at least has the decency not to show up all the grime that is probably coating it, and she slides over some coins. "Do you know Andy? Is she here?" He jerks his head over to the other corner and when Nile steps towards it and the right people move the right way she can spot the woman herself, hunched in a corner over a glass, clutching a bottle in a white-knuckled grip. "Thank you."

Andy looks up, startled but quickly calm, when Nile drops her suitcases to the floor beside the little table a little more heavily than necessary. "I was right then?" she says, turning it into a question. Nile just gives her a look and snags a stool to perch primly on. She takes a single sip of the cider and then pointedly pushes the mug into the centre of the table with one finger, never to be touched again. From her pocket she draws the end of the hardy pie she had bought before her drive to Elvagyodask, unwrapping it and tearing in hungrily. "He let you down."

"Not precisely," Nile replies between bites. She has no need to defend Booker to Andy but as with earlier; she doesn’t enjoy seeing people in pain, and Booker fits that description as much as Andy does. "He could not help me with accommodation. I thought you might be a better bet."

"There's no room in my house," Andy says quickly, too quickly. "But I can go with you to somewhere that will rent rooms for cheap. I don’t suppose Booker is going to be paying you…"

Nile lets her assume what she wants, turning her head to people-watch with a non-committal hum. "You didn’t tell me you were a Detective," she says after a moment, looking back at Andy, who shrugs, completing the toss of yet another shot of clear liquid down her throat and smacking her lips with barely a hiss at the taste. Nile can smell it from across the table. It speaks volumes how easily she throws it back.

"No."

They look at each other without a sound - Nile's challenging brown meeting Andy's stubborn blue. Silence stretches between them, and then Andy's mouth twitches. Nile's eyes crinkle in response and they start laughing, quietly and mostly at themselves, but it feels like a breakthrough. Andy nudges the next glass she pours over to Nile, smirking at Nile’s disgusted reaction once she quickly throws it back. The air between them relaxes and Andy is surprisingly the one to pick the conversation back up. Nile feels like she has passed a test of some kind. "No, I did not say anything, because I’m not anymore. Not really. I keep the job title but no one ever calls on my help and I don’t offer it. Besides, from what I recall you were in rather a hurry to get to our _beloved_ librarian."

It sounds like a curse when she bares her teeth around the sarcastic word. Nile files it away in her imaginary growing 'Andy & Booker - what happened?' case file. "I was, that’s very true. You two have some bad blood, I sense."

"We will not be talking about that," Andy says, so firmly it sounds like the nails being hammered into a coffin, appropriately. "Did you find the place alright, in the end?"

"Oh yes, just a bit of a walk. No cars here, I notice."

"No, we tend to stick to our own two feet, and the odd cart. Electrics don’t work well this deep in the mountains, and the roads are too steep and muddy for most things anyway. You'll need new boots if you really are staying."

"I need them anyway, I think," Nile admits with a sigh. "But thank you. If you have any tips, I would greatly appreciate them. I am not sure how much time I will be spending in the library, if I’m honest, so a guide to the rest of the town could prove a welcome distraction."

Andy raises an eyebrow over her glass, swallowing it quickly and reaching to close up the rest of the bottle. "And your gracious host will not offer that?"

 _It would be a shock if he could walk from one end of the library to the other without needing to sit down,_ Nile thinks, but she doesn’t voice it. They can fight their own battles without her help. "The more friends I make the merrier my visit will be, I am sure."

The Detective demurs and waits for her to pack her dinner away. Then she takes one of Nile’s suitcases, unprompted, leading the way out. Nile misses the feeling of humanity and reality inside the bar as soon as they leave it, but with Andy by her side the streets don’t feel quite so dark.

They walk quickly, Andy's slightly longer, local legs forcing Nile to hurry to keep up in her ruined boots. She refuses to ask Andy to slow down and Andy actually turns to grin at her, not a wide grin but a grin nonetheless, when they reach the top of the street and Nile is still hard on her heels, a little out of breath but managing. She keeps going, guiding them through slightly drier streets onto a tucked back lane, and then into the alley between two unloved but not outright dangerous looking buildings.

"In you go," Andy nods, gesturing to a small door in the wall, above which a sign is stuck claiming the building as the Jerusalem Inn Boarding House & Private Rooms. "Let me do the talking. It will be quicker without translating into English."

"As you wish," Nile defers, perfectly happy to stand and wait while Andy mutters with the innkeeper, rubbing her hands together. All the exercise has kept her warm so far but now that she is inside a closed room she can feel the shivers waiting to set in. Hopefully the room will not have a draught, otherwise her shopping trip will be for a few more items than just boots.

The boarding house has a tiny reception area, behind the desk of which an old living room is just about visible through a half-open door, a fire roaring merrily in the grate. Nile can hear two soft, male voices from within. Maybe a residents' lounge? She will have to enquire another time, when her eyes are not starting to droop from the sudden lovely embrace of warmth and the promise of shortly becoming horizontal.

Just as she yawns, Andy turns and hands her a room key, to room number seven, ushering her upstairs to find it. "Don’t worry, I will explain in the morning," Andy says when Nile asks about payment, dropping her suitcase at the door and giving her a long look. "Come and find me at my house, I’ll wait for you there. Now sleep well, Nile Freeman. And welcome to Elvagyodask. May you eventually bid it goodbye again."

"Sure," Nile mumbles, waving her off. The door clicks shut after a soft huff, and Nile turns the key to lock it so that she can remove the awful boots, fling them away, shuffle out of as many layers as necessary and tumble right into bed without even checking it over first. She is beyond caring, although just before sleep takes her she does remember one last thing; with a quick dart out of the covers and over to her coat, she collects the small doll the driver had given her and places it under her pillow.

And then she sleeps, like the dead, straight through ‘til morning.

* * *

Nile awakes to the dulcet, gentle tones of someone violently beating a carpet in the street outside her window. She rouses with a groan, fighting free of the covers, and blinks in the light that filters through her open curtains and just about reaches the bed. The room is clearly not on a sunny side of the boarding house and in the, well, light of day for a given value of _light_ , it is much smaller and more cramped than she had seen last night. It will suit her fine though, with a little wardrobe for clothes; a sink in one corner; the narrow bed; and a tiny desk and rickety chair that she can see getting a fair bit of use if she needs to do any extended independent work.

What work that is, exactly, remains unknown. She could try and form her own project and see what comes of it, or she could follow the thread that Booker had reluctantly dangled yesterday; the mysterious death and the allegations of cultism in the town. She is a researcher, so she will aim to document and explain the incident if she can. Record it for posterity, or for future academic papers that await.

That seems to be the best heading Nile can give herself this soon after waking, but it does its job in helping her mind begin to work, rumbling into action all through the habitual, rhythmic motions of dressing herself. Now that she is here in town she finally indulges in her nice woollen pants, comfortable and warm and practical, so she is not dragging her skirts around in the mud and tripping over them on the uneven streets. She has a spare pair of shoes but the now-ruined boots are better suited to the weather, even mangled as they are, so on they go with a quick wince and a promise to her toes and ankles to replace them imminently. The little doll under the pillow ends up in the breast pocket of her shirt, safely trapped under her thick sweater in place.

On her way to the bathroom she takes note of how many of the doors seem to be occupied - there is a weird smell coming from number nine and number four offers up the soft sounds of movement within through the thin wooden door as she passes. No one else stirs, so Nile has no reason to linger, heading down the stairs and out into the chill of the morning air with just a nod to the disinterested teenager on reception.

She breathes in deeply, coughing at the faint notes of rotting fish she can still somehow smell even all this way from the lakeside. It rises through the air, like invisible fog, but is not so cloying that Nile cannot do as she always does - as she knows she will have to do many, many times a day while here - and raise her head to start walking.

It is only when she gets part of the way towards the library that she remembers Andy's parting words. "Damn," she curses, starting to jog carefully down in the direction of Andy's place. If she can get there quickly and explain then she can make it to the library within time for her own schedule. She just hopes-

Andy is not in.

"What in the name of-!" Nile curses, trying to look through the windows. Had she imagined Andy promising to meet her? And now she is late to the library too. "Good morning to you too," she grumbles in irritation, cutting her losses and hurrying off to find Booker.

He is just as pale and unsteady as when she had seen him the day before, blinking his watery eyes at her with faint comprehension while she invites herself in with a cheery greeting and goes ahead to give herself a tour. "You came back?" he keeps saying, frowning and rubbing his hair and then frowning again. _He looks a little pathetic really_ , Nile thinks, wondering if there is a shower somewhere she can push him into. She snorts at the image of a wet, bedraggled Booker, still dressed and just dripping like a sad cat. 

She shakes her head when he asks what she’s laughing at. They have work to do and Nile wants to make use of his lucidity for as long as it lasts. 

After some discussion - mostly Nile asking questions and receiving unhelpful or one-word answers - they agree to start by tidying up and letting Nile get used to the place. Booker gives her a fresh tour, this time explaining the different sections and pointing out the actual layout of the interior. There’s the main room, with the long stacks of books running parallel to the windows on the north wall; and a long line of smaller rooms on the south side, including the staff room and its attached kitchenette-cum-stockroom, a study, a row of work rooms and smaller archives, and at the far end are the toilets and emergency exit door.

The study is the worst of it, messy and muddled, and clearly a sore spot for Booker. He lingers outside when she goes in, hands shoved into his pockets. "What is this exactly?"

"Notes. Mostly. From the case."

"I suppose I should start here, then.”

"They are old, ruined I am sure, but if you want to try then be my guest. I’m going to…" he clears his throat, looking away, abashed, and hooks his thumb towards the staff room. Nile clenches her jaw but nods and Booker vanishes, closing the door behind him to succumb to unreality once more. At least it leaves her with plenty of uninterrupted time to go through the papers he has left for her.

It really does seem like most of the room has not been touched in years. Layers of dust line every surface, and the only stroke of luck is that the top layer of notes seem to have protected the ones underneath by remaining undisturbed. And there are a _lot_ underneath.

The task will take a good long while, so Nile rolls up her sleeves and gets started. No time like the present.

* * *

By the end of the day Booker has resurfaced and excused himself again. He had appeared at Nile's shoulder looking more ghost than man, swaying and wide-eyed with the lingering effects of the drug, startling the life out of her. She’d tried to engage him in some kind of conversation, not really hoping for much and not yet with specific enough questions to require answers to.

It is just as well because he had been all but useless, gazing into the study from the safety of the doorway, running his fingers up and down the frame absently. She had recognised the look on his face as one that sometimes afflicted the faces of those who had seen war, or other great evils. Sometimes such people visited Miskatonic for further study; some simply to be heard.

 _Which are you, Mr. Booker?_ Nile had wondered, studying his back as he left, retreating once more to abandon her to her task. _Are you to help me or do you need my help?_

She knows very well which one she would place her bets on.

The light of day grows weaker and weaker through the marked glass of the library windows and Nile finally admits defeat. She sits back, blowing out a breath and choking on the dust that arises, petulantly exploding into the air to remind her that she is disturbing its home. "Piss off," she grumbles, stretching her arms up over her head and groaning when her back cracks. It feels as though she has spent the entire day crawling around the carpet of scrawled handwriting and she is suffering for it now, youth or no.

As she goes to stand, grabbing the lip of the heavy desk, she notices it - a strange difference under her palm; a slight shift. As though part of the moulding of the wood is coming away from the rest. Ordinarily Nile would write it off as yet another sign that the place is falling apart and that Booker is a truly poor librarian as well as adult, but when she pulls her hand away?

It comes back stained with the violent yellow of old glue.

Not the sort of thing to be used on an antique such as this particular desk, which is carved from only a few pieces of thick teak, not overly fussy and certainly not the sort of thing to have delicate parts on it that might become in need of repair. In fact the whole piece is remarkably well-kept considering its age and neglect.

So what has been glued onto it that - she peers closer - has also been stained to match?

"Curiouser and curiouser…" Nile murmurs, grinning as she sets to picking carefully at the hidden section. Almost the entire side of the desk eventually parts from the main, and when she digs her fingers underneath to feel the back the panel shifts, sliding outwards towards her.

It takes all of Nile's strength not to squeal in sheer excitement. _A secret drawer._

There is some wiggling and teasing to do to get the drawer open, but soon enough it pulls smoothly, freed from the glue. A flat, thin drawer that seems to hold nothing but photographs is revealed to her eager eyes.

Photographs of…

"You should not have opened that." Booker's voice startles her so badly she drops the photo she had picked up and falls onto her backside when she whirls around towards the door.

"Booker! You surprised me. I thought you would-"

"Please, Nile. I might be slow and full of cobwebs but I have a working pair of eyes." he sighs, scrubbing a hand over his drawn face. 

Nile drops her false smile for a truer expression, fixing her eyes on him. "You can explain to me then, why you hid these all away," she replies, brandishing the dropped photo and reaching in to gather up the rest.

"They were not relevant to the investigation. They are not relevant now."

"And yet you hid them."

He frowns. "Because they are worthless to you. They have no value to any research you could do."

"Are you sure?"

"Quite positive."

"Then why do they show me you and Andy, during what I can only assume is the original case?"

"Because- because that- it still has nothing to do with any of it. They are from leisure time, not part of the investigation itself."

"So who took the photos then, who was wandering around with you, reading your notes and seeing your deductions? Did you never-"

He seems suddenly tall and broad and imposing, his eyes brightly fervent and deadly serious. “No,” he grinds out. "She did not betray us, if that is what you mean to imply. Her name was Quỳnh."

Nile remains silent, and Booker sighs wringing his hands together and shrinking in on himself. The sudden change makes her neck ache with phantom whiplash, and she watches him take a tentative step into the room, and then another and another until he stands near enough to hold his hand out, brushing his finger over the photos clutched in Nile's hand. "May I?" he asks, his voice hoarse. She nods silently and hands them over, following him when he moves, seemingly by instinct or old habit, to perch against the edge of the desk, crossing his legs at the ankles and shuffling through the images.

He holds one out after gazing down at it for a long time. Nile takes it to look at the grainy image of what looks like this very room, considerably tidier, occupied by a significantly younger Booker and Andy.

"Her name was Quỳnh. And we- I failed her. She lies at the bottom of that lake somewhere now, has done for almost twenty years. I put these away because I could no longer bear to look at them, not because I wanted to hide them for nefarious purposes. I suppose I needed to… To bury them."

"'Them'?" Nile repeats quietly, settling back beside him.

Booker looks at her with such pain. _Yes, very like those poor traumatised souls that haunted the University corridors for their brief visits_. But his pain is more vivid, and present. It is in the photos he holds and in the room around them and in the lake below the town, it seems. "You don’t come back from such trials the same, Miss Freeman. Nile. And when you make mistakes like the ones I made… When you get someone you love killed? You kill everyone else who loved them just as surely, in soul if not body."

"Andy is far from dead, Booker."

His laugh is more like the wild flapping of a rusty-hinged gate in a storm than anything approaching humour. His lips stay turned down. "Perhaps not to you. But you cannot tell me she is truly living, either. Not when Quỳnh is lost to the depths. Where I put her."

Silence as thick as honey, but cold instead of sweet, falls around them. It clogs their throats and lies heavily on their lips and shoulders, weighing them both down. Nile wishes more than ever to return to their first conversation and demand the truth of the matter - the plain facts and nothing more - from Booker, which it occurs to her may be the kinder option than waiting for him to offer it up. But it is her first day and she is starting to sense that the scope of her work is greater than she could have imagined.

Nile cannot bring back the dead. But sometimes, just sometimes- she can exorcise demons from the souls of those who have seen death and regret having lived, just by listening. She will gladly hear Booker out if that is what he needs, and hope that she will one day wave goodbye to him as a living, breathing man instead of a haunted spirit inhabiting a mausoleum of bone and blood and greasy blond hair.

"I have no doubt in my mind that you were not Quỳnh's killer, Booker," she says eventually. He flinches away from the absolution, turning his face to the side to hide from her. "Perhaps helping me document the case to bring back to the University will help you to see that as plainly as I do."

He shakes his head but does not argue, fingers turning white as they pinch the photographs tightly. Nile waits him out and it does not take long for his whole body to slump. In relief, possibly. She would prefer that to defeat. "I can try," Booker hedges.

"Good. Then tomorrow you will take care of the library properly while I finish tackling this room. And the day after we will set to work. We will need supplies - pens and paper and files, if you please. Anything related to the incident itself and the case that is not currently in this room, as well."

“I will see what I can do,” he says quietly.

"Very well, I will see you in the morning again. And Booker?" Booker looks up at her. "I insist you find a shower somewhere in short order to clean yourself up. Full offence intended - you reek."

 _Is that a hint of a lightness in his cheeks?_ Nile considers it a resounding success either way.

* * *

Nicknames have ever been a sign of affection. Pet names, shortenings, monikers... Andy had once been the proud owner of one of her very own; the Sheriff, they had called her. Well, not so much they as _she_. But it helped to think in less specific terms so she had become they and they were nameless and their voices could not ring silent in her ears, the lack of it as loud as the knell of a church bell. 

Yes, the Sheriff. Sheriff of Nottingham, in fact, it had been once upon a time. Teasing and sly and full of love, so much love. 

There had been love in everything, everywhere, back then. 

_"And does that make you my Marian?"_

_"Perhaps I am Robin, in the woods, begging you to take chase..."_

Andy throws back the cheap excuse for alcohol with barely a wince and pours herself another, refusing to move from her uncomfortable, hard chair. Let it hurt. She will not give in to simple discomfort. Not when the pain afflicting the rest of her life hurts so much worse, and has to be weathered for so much longer. 

Fucking Booker. Why does he have to be all getting involved, doing shit again, after all these years? Why has he not just crawled into that drug-den he had turned the library into and stayed there? Why does he have to go dragging things back up, bringing some poor young woman in to be taken and chewed up by the town like the rest of their sorry souls?

What a vital thing she is, too. Brimming with not only life but such tenacity, motivation, determination to make something of it. Andy downs the next shot in a premature toast for when that all vanishes. 

Knocking on her door distracts her from refilling her glass again and she spills some of the bottle, jumping up with a curse. The knock sounds and she yells out something horrible, insults to make whoever it was _go away_. 

Nile's voice drifts back. "I know you're in there. I checked at the Coffin. Missed you this morning, and we need to talk about my room payment!" she calls. 

"No we don’t. Leave me be, Nile."

"As if," Nile snorts. "Open the door Andy."

She does. 

Nile smiles when she steps inside and makes her way through to the kitchen as they had done previously, eyeing the single bottle and glass on the table. "Wonderful. Does anyone have any healthy pastimes in this town or...?" 

"You won’t be so quick to judge after staying awhile," Andy mutters. "That I can promise you. What did you want again?"

Business is easy. Andy can do business. "Well, a few things," Nile starts, standing by the table. "Is there somewhere more comfortable we can sit? A sitting room, perhaps?"

_\- dancing on the carpet the fire is lit they are laughing and singing and shouting their life their love out loud between the walls and crowing to the dawn that they will not be defeated by this place by this darkness by this-_

Andy looks at her flatly and sits back in her chair. "No." 

The harsh response clearly surprises Nile because she flounders for a few moments before sitting opposite, eyeing Andy more pointedly than before. "Very well, I shall not expect much hospitality then. You weren't here this morning?"

"Had a job. Occasionally I still do that, see," she says, daring Nile to comment. 

Nile takes the dare. "A real job? And you... Said yes?"

"I am still a detective, yes.”

"What was it about?"

"Are we here to talk about my work or did you have actual questions that needed answering?" Andy snaps back. She is fully aware that she is being overly snide, overly sharp, but the memories and the mention of that _fucking librarian_ had not helped her sleep. Having to work and abandon her bottle for most of the cursed day only made matters worse. "Because it’s about to be my dinnertime."

"I see," Nile replies, her own voice hard as nails. _Good, good. It will stand her in good stead_. Andy thinks about toasting the end of that, too, but holds off for now. "So you were out this morning, but I had no time to shop anyway today. I came to tell you, that was all."

Andy nods once. "And the room?"

Nile makes her explain the conditions and price several times over and insists on paying her back somehow before Andy can manage to form a coherent protest. She wrinkles her nose at every currency Nile offers until giving in to a sigh and reaching out, touching Nile's hand to stop her from rifling through her strangely diverse purse one more time. 

"Don’t. There's nothing in there you could use to pay me anyway." 

"Then I owe you one. And I will not hear a word against it."

"Very well, as you please," Andy mutters. It is hardly as though she intends to cash that in, but it is handy to stop Nile looking so stubbornly desperate to balance the books between them. "Speaking of your rooms - you should get back. It’s unwise to walk the streets too late and we’re already long past dark. Have you even eaten?"

 _Why had she asked that?_ It isn’t like Andy can offer anything in the way of hot food herself. She had intended to go up to the church and see what they were serving for once, in order to do her job on a full stomach in the morning. 

"As a matter of fact I have not. Care to show me to a meal?" Nile responds, a glint in her eye. Too sharp, too clever, that one. But for that Andy does not even consider drinking. It isn’t the wits that are taken from you in this town, only the ability to act upon them in any meaningful way. "Perhaps I can pay for-"

"No. But, follow me," Andy says. "Stick close. And I hope you have a strong stomach..."

* * *

Once again it feels as though the streets are that much more bearable at Andy's side. Not welcoming - that seems unlikely to ever be the case - but certainly not hostile. Andy walks briskly, but without the encumbrance of her luggage and skirts Nile finds it easy to keep at her side, a little frustrated by her boots perhaps but still pleased with her own performance. She gives Andy a little proud smile when they climb high enough that the streets are no longer mud and Andy turns to see her close by, raising an eyebrow. 

They share a smile, a small, tentative thing. It feels wonderful after all the unpleasantness Nile has suffered through so far. Even the aching and pinching of her boots is not enough to dull it, meagre though it is. 

"So where are you taking me?" she wonders out loud, trying to take in the route and their surroundings as much as possible, even in the dark, in order to start building a mental map of the town streets. She might need it someday. Andy, hands thrust into the pockets of her heavy coat, jerks her chin up and to the left, turning them in that direction before long. 

“Dinner,” is the only word of reply. 

They pass rows of dark, silent houses, many with broken windows or overgrown with weeds in front, clearly empty. There are not many gas-lights on the street around here that are working, and Nile assumes they're gas only because they do not glow like the electric bulbs she knows from home, and because of Andy’s explanation the day before. 

At the top of the street there is a tiny, half-wooden, half-stone church that sits quietly in the darkness. Lights are on inside, glowing softly through the few windows to the outside. They approach the front and Andy nudges her in the right direction, crossing the street. Nile can see people gathered, and the looming shadows of trees behind the church that must be some kind of small park. She wonders if anyone in this town ever visits, just to walk around... It does not seem likely. 

The crowd outside the church is surprisingly subdued, shuffling and barely talking to one another, only at murmurs and mumbles if they do. The two of them join a queue and walk slowly forwards with the rest bit by bit in companionable silence. 

Nile takes the chance to people-watch. 

At the head of the queue there is a man, a priest by the look of him, with a few helpful volunteers helping him serve some kind of stew from a large tureen. For a town revolving around the fishing industry it seems to be rather lacking in fish. Most of the other diners - is it right to call them diners? - seem to be thin and nervous, darting their eyes away from him and offering small curtseys and bows when he hands over their food with a murmur. There are no children whatsoever, and no one lingers. 

No one but a shadowy figure sat on the wall, out of the direct light and bowed over strangely, but Nile cannot get a good look before Andy tugs her forwards. 

"Mind your manners with this one. In fact, aim not to speak to him at all."

"Why, is he unkind?" 

"No; he’s a priest. And the Church here is powerful in ways I cannot explain to you, Nile."

"Not ever or not here?"

Andy looks pained but grits out, "the second one," before they find themselves in front of the table and the tureen and the priest. 

He asks something softly and Andy nods for them both. Nile thinks he looks awfully... Sad. Two bowls are ladled out and handed over and he adds what sounds like a polite blessing, still with that same slightly melancholic but gentle look on his face.

"Thank you," Nile tells him, surprised by _his_ surprise. His head snaps up - Andy’s as well - and he blinks at her, eyes scanning curiously over her face, before a smile turns up his mouth and he ducks his head in a nod, turning to the next person. 

To her credit Andy waits until they have finished their bowls and handed them back to be washed by a volunteer before dragging her away by the elbow, back down the street. She glares dead ahead the whole way through but Nile is still far from prepared for the strength of the fear and fury in her voice when Andy starts to hiss in her ear. "What the hell was that?! I said not to speak!" Nile throws her hand off when they’re more or less out of view and straightens her coat sleeve.

"You suggested it. But contrary to what you might believe I’m not a _child_ , and I am _not_ your subordinate."

"Listening to me could save your life."

"And why should I trust that that is something you want?"

"Because it is! I would not see any harm come to any innocent in this town, though they be but few and far between-"

"Like Quỳnh?"

Andy is so struck that she stops dead in the centre of the street, frozen solid. She looks like she has become nothing more than a statue, blending in with the stone around. Nile feels horribly guilty but she finds she has to stand firm, and try and explain.

"Andy? I apologise, forgive me, but I find it hard to trust your judgement when you are clearly not on top form now, and yet even when you were your friend died. It’s unfair but you should know my honest feelings."

"My... Friend?" _Is that the only thing she has focused on?_ "Quỳnh was not my _friend_ , Nile. Quỳnh was my heart. My soul made real on earth for me to walk beside. Quỳnh was- we were meant to go _together_. And your precious Booker saw to it that we could not."

"Whatever did or did not-"

"It’s his fault. Ask him tomorrow, he won’t deny the truth of it." That certainly rings true, although Nile is less inclined to allow him to drown himself in that guilt than Andy. "Because of him I was not there to save her. But I can save you, in some small way, here and now. If you will just _listen_ to me."

They lock eyes for only a few seconds before Nile purses her lips and inclines her head. "Very well, I will listen. But I cannot promise I will always obey your every command, Detective. Not without some sort of reasoning." Andy looks at her, inscrutable for a moment before she softens and huffs. 

"Your rooms are not far. If you cannot come tomorrow then... Find me like today, I suppose. I will see what I can do about the boots." 

"Don’t forget that I owe you still."

"We'll add it to your tab," Andy says dryly, her legs jolting back into action like they have been awakened from rigor mortis. She bids Nile a goodnight when they make it back to the Jerusalem Inn and leaves, a solitary figure as she strides down the streets. Or stalks, maybe. Andy has that distinct predator feel to her, signs of the detective she once was shining through. Whatever case she has been asked to work will no doubt be putty in her hands. 

Nile will ask her about it tomorrow, she decides, yawning so much it proves a struggle to wash up before bed. She collapses under the covers with the doll back in place under the pillow, and falls straight to sleep - dead to the world and too tired to dream.

_Nile Freeman on the streets of Elvagyodask_


	3. The mystery unfolds

It would be incorrect to say that any morning in Elvagyodask has ever dawned bright and early. Even at the height of summer, the forest and mountains around obscure the sun expertly until a reasonable hour, shading and shadowing the buildings and inhabitants in cool dark grey. The winters are even harsher but then the trees provide a little cover, relenting in their oppression and sheltering the town instead. It does not do much to protect from the lashing of storm winds and sharp rain but snow is more likely to be slush than a deceptively beautiful blanket, and overall it is not so harsh as to be dangerous.

There are more than enough dangers in Elvagyodask without the threat of the elements added on top.

Nile awakes again in the morning, distinctly less well-rested than she'd hoped but determined to take on the day with the same fervour and stubborn will she always does. This time she is not alone when she steps into the corridor to head to the bathroom - there is a man just backing out of number four, speaking softly to someone inside. He blocks the doorway so she cannot see into the room, and nearly turns straight into her as he clicks the door shut quietly.

They yelp and flinch away from each other in surprise.

“Shit,” she swears on instinct, wincing at the impolite curse and pressing a hand to her chest while her heart calms. “You surprised me!”

"Goodness, I'm sorry," he apologises immediately, holding his hands up in case she needs steadying. He is handsome and tall, with a crinkly smile that warms his face under a thick beard. The curls on his head are messy from sleep and Nile fancies she can see the faint imprint of a pillow still clinging to his cheek. Apart from the state of his grooming, his teeth are white and clear when he smiles, and the hands he lifts are clean and fingernails trimmed - not the hands of a working man - contradicting the plainness of his clothing and the rest. His English is flawless too, only the barest trace of an accent lingering when he continues, "I did not hear a door."

"No, nor did I," Nile replies, offering back a smile of her own, that reassures him enough to turn from faintly concerned and apologetic, to just friendly. "My apologies, I just need to-"

"Oh, yes, of course!" he waves for her to continue. "I will wait my turn, ladies first." The wink makes her snort and roll her eyes but he does not seem to mean it with any real intent to charm her. Not once has he cast a glance over her less-than-fully-dressed body and his hands have been kept firmly where is proper. Even post-wink his gaze is honest and open and utterly innocent.

Nile dips her head and hurries off to get clean, hearing him duck back into his room behind her. Number nine at least no longer smells when she passes it, presumably cleaned the day before, and the rest of the floor remains silent and, she assumes, unoccupied.

Nothing stirs behind number four when she retreats to her room, and Nile turns her nosiness off before she starts to wonder and try and fill in those blanks. A man like that, in a place like this? Most likely a more well-off member of the town with a secret lover. She's seen it before - some of the less honourable professors at Miskatonic had kept amorous affairs from their spouses and there was a hotel not so far away with a reputation for discretion. It amuses Nile to think she may be staying in such a place, that Andy may have brought her to a glorified bordello. She does not think it bothers her too much, really.

As she sorts out her bedding - unable to shake the voice of her mother in her ears, telling her to make the bed if only so that it is more pleasant to unmake again at bedtime - Nile catches sight of the tiny doll again. It seems to smile up at her, waiting, and Nile hesitates. It seems thoroughly ridiculous to believe in superstitions, and she’s a little embarrassed that she caved to them the day before. 

And yet her fingers brush the cotton-and-thread of its tiny body and she finds herself soothed.

"What the hell. Cannot hurt, right?" she says, before plucking it up and placing it carefully in the breast pocket of her shirt again. “I hope that satisfies you, Mr. Driver, wherever you are…”

When she gets out onto the street this morning and thinks about it, it does seem as though the smell of fish is a little less strong, and the cold a little less penetrating. "If that's your doing then I am grateful, little friend," Nile murmurs, patting her pocket, and then sets off to the library.

She finds a bakery on the way and purchases a simple and greasy looking apple turnover to get her through until later, along with supplies for lunch and a cup of terrible coffee that she drinks standing at the counter, ignoring the suspicious eyes of the baker on her back. People walk by outside occasionally, and Nile wonders what sort of business there is to do in a town like this. What work do they have to get to? How do they generate any income whatsoever, or is it all simply already there, rotating from person to person in an endless loop of purchases?

There must be something however, for the town to be as-yet not entirely abandoned. Newspapers are being sold, two mothers walk with prams and a cluster of young children passes by on the way to what must be a school nearby. Priests too, like the one from last night, more than Nile would have expected, mostly in pairs or alone.

She makes a firm note to get Andy to explain her cryptic statement about the church to her as soon as possible.

The library is unchanged when Nile arrives, a brisk walk later. She counted no less than seven priests wandering the streets, and all of them had been carefully avoided by the rest of the townsfolk. Nile is burning with questions and buoyed by her coffee, so it is disappointing to say the least when she enters the library and sees absolutely no improvement whatsoever in the state of the place. Booker is absent, probably still holed up in his opium den, and the library feels colder than before.

"Damn it all, man," Nile swears, stamping her feet and watching her breath puff out in a cloud of miserable cold. Actually, it is cold enough that Nile wonders if there's a window open somewhere. She goes to look, finding what she expects halfway down the stacks near the end of the long row of windows. The lake sprawls out on the other side of the glass, a few small boats dotted around on the surface. "Booker? Are you decent?" she shouts back into the library, just for good measure, locking the handle tightly and turning back around.

The sound of a thump and something falling loudly over confirms that no; Booker had not run away in the night and yes; he is still as much of a disaster as the day before. Nile sighs, and then marches back through the books to find him. 

"Miss F- Nile. I can only apologise, I did not realise the time…" Booker says quickly when they meet at the front desk. He flushes a pastel pink under Nile's assessing gaze and wilts when she just flicks her eyebrows up briefly.

"Well, here I am. I have some food, but you said something the other day about tea? Requesting you find a wash basin was a little too optimistic, I see."

"I could-" He wrings his hands, and touches his hair before drawing his fingers sharply away at the sensation. It makes Nile smile a little, a little pang of sympathy warming her chest.

"Tea first,” she says decisively. “We’ll get some food and drink in you. It is freezing in here, but I suppose I can give credit for the attempt."

Booker blinks at her, hands hovering uncertainly. "What attempt?"

"At cleaning up. Opening a window is a small step but it is something, and I will admit it is a lot fresher in here, despite the chill. Now, to the tea. Do you need a hand?"

Her no-nonsense tone breaks into his faintly-frowning reverie and he hops to it with a quick "no please, allow me". Nile takes a moment to follow him into the kitchenette to watch how he makes the tea, casting a glance or three over the rest of the room from the doorway between the two. It seems worse in the light of day than it had that first late afternoon. The chaise longue is sagging and only has a few blankets thrown haphazardly aside on it. A cushion that might double as a pillow but looks more like a bag of rocks is squashed in the end with the arm. The entire thing would barely fit _Nile_ end to end; let alone a tall man like Booker. His feet must dangle off the end, luckily unencumbered by a second chaise arm. 

"Is there a reason you don't sleep at home?" Nile asks. She is kind enough to wait until he has put down the hot water in case it is a startling topic, but the forethought proves unnecessary when Booker barely reacts.

He just replies, "this is my home now," and keeps delicately swirling the teapot to infuse the leaves evenly.

"This is a library."

"Can it not be both?" he asks, a flash of humour in the glance he tosses her over his shoulder. "I know what you are asking, Nile. I know you want to know a great many things. About me, and Andy, and Qu-" he chokes on her name, clearing his throat quickly and returning to the tea with his shoulders high and tight. "I will try to answer them."

"Very well. When?"

"When… When the room is ready. I will be ready then, as well, and you can start your investigation with an interview."

Nile flushes, inordinately pleased at having her research called an investigation. "Oh well, you know. It is not much of an investigation. We, or rather _you_ , already know what happened. I merely want to record it. I have some sense that it might help you, and I confess to a certain amount of professional intrigue in the matter, if that’s not too blunt to say."

"I understand," Booker smiles, bringing her a very old but clean looking mug with her tea. "There is no milk, I am afraid, but the tea here is mixed with herbs rather than the English blend, and it would not taste right at all."

They sit together, out at the reception desk, and sip slowly. Booker lets his eyelids close and inhales the steam with a quiet sigh, years falling from his face in a single moment only to pile back on with the reopening of his eyes. Nile does not pretend she isn't looking when he turns her way because what would be the point? She needs to know him to get his answers and he has already pointed out that he is no fool. Their eye contact is perfectly neutral, coloured with intrigue but no undue intensity. Booker is not even the first to look away, but he does lower his gaze to the floor when Nile turns back to him again, balancing her mug and saucer on her knee.

With the unkempt staff room behind them and the stacks in front, sprawling out, it feels just like any other library. A little less unsettling than the grand monstrous one at Miskatonic University, but equally as fascinating. Libraries always have such distinct personalities, Nile thinks idly, but then shakes that thought away. Facts are the order of the day, not wild imaginings. Nothing lives under the bed; the shadows do not hide monsters; and libraries cannot have personalities.

To put that silliness from her mind, Nile clears her throat to start their conversation up again. Booker's face pinches subtly and his hands tighten on his mug, which are not signs of a man looking forward to talking. The breath held ready in her throat is let go in a soft sigh instead. It only serves to make Booker look more pained.

"Well! We cannot simply drink tea all day. The room must be finished, and you have your tasks as well, if you remember?" It is a genuine question, so Nile waits until Booker tentatively nods. "Excellent. I shall find you at lunch then. Don't… Get lost in the stacks." _Don't go back to your drugs_ , she would rather say, but Booker _is_ trying. He nods again, rising slowly when she does and when she reaches the study room and turns around he is poking around under the reception desk muttering to himself. Nile hears the words 'where' and 'rag' in what sounds like French before he lapses into the local language, and figures out the rest.

* * *

_It should not be this difficult to clean. You just- pick up a cloth and rub? Or maybe there needs to be water. No but most of the dirt is dust… The carpets will never be free of it but the surfaces can be brushed- onto the carpets?_

Booker sighs, twisting the cloth he had found in his hands. He chances a glance at the study room door, seeing signs of movement through the gap. Is she reading his work? His notes? Categorising or judging? Filing or hiding her disgust at his greatest failure? From what little he knows of the whirlwind young lady who had descended upon him and his library like a force of nature, Booker knows that she would never carry out his worst fears. For one she is too curious - too much an investigator (and he had not missed how she'd reacted when he'd called her work that before). For another; she is kind. A hard kindness, perhaps - tough love rather than sugary sweet sympathy, but Booker is not so deep in self-pity that he cannot admit it is working for him. Nile has been in his life for all of a matter of days, and yet Booker is here - awake and _cleaning_.

Trying to clean.

He steels what inner strength he has left and forces himself to get it together. He needs a bucket and some water, and perhaps a pan and brush. There must be a broom cupboard somewhere that a janitor once used, surely? There had been a janitor once, Booker would swear to it. He would… Would he?

His memory is not what it was, he has to admit. The effects of age and neglect, coupled with the impact of both his own trauma and the laundanum… It is a wonder Booker remains as sharp as he does, able to talk and walk and clean.

Try to clean.

In his search he does at least manage to locate some kind of janitorial cupboard with an unappealing mop and bucket and a broom to boot, down by the toilets. There are a few big glass bottles of chemicals as well that he opts not to play around with - water will have to do, and perhaps some of the soap he believes still remains, shrivelled, in the kitchenette sink.

The soap is where Booker expected, as dry and old as a raisin, but it works when he sneaks in a quick wash at the basin, around his neck and under his arms, wincing when he has to put the same unpleasant shirt back on top afterwards. At least there is no mirror in the kitchenette to have to see himself in. He is not sure he would be able to hold his nerve at the sight.

"Booker?" Nile's voice calls from the study. Booker calls back a croaky affirmative so she will know where he is.

"I wondered if you wanted more tea?" she asks, leaning out of the doorway while he deposits his haul on the reception desk. Her question is such a simple generosity, courtesy of simply being in company, but Booker finds himself briefly hard pressed to keep from crying. Or maybe laughing. Either way his lips tremble when he presses them tight together and his arms shake, braced on the counter that he stares blindly down at. Companionship. _Good God, how long has it been?_

Nile, bless her kind efficiency, sits him down on the receptionist's chair and tells him in no uncertain terms to take a breath. It helps - the firm direction - and Booker manages to gasp some air in, struggling to work out when he had stopped. "Sorry," he wheezes, but she shakes her head.

"You are far from the first individual to have been struck by an influx of panic, Booker. Remember to breathe, and it will pass."

"Will it come again?"

He winces when she raises her piercing eyes to his, embarrassed by the thin, childish sound of his voice speaking the plea. But he cannot take the words back once they have escaped and Nile is the only lifeline he has to grasp onto, now that he is finding himself with his head above water for the first time in almost two decades. She clasps his shoulder in a strong grip. "It might," she says, catching his eyes and holding them. "It probably will. I thought it already had, before, when we were talking the first night. But it will pass, and although it might not feel that way; you can breathe. Remember that."

Remember to breathe. Booker wonders if she knows how difficult that directive has been for him since… Since Quỳnh. The steadiness of her hold and her expression tells him she does.

He nods, reaching up to tentatively grasp her wrist in thanks, and she leaves him be to collect himself.

"You know, I used to take statements from people like you," Nile tells him a little while later, sharing her lunch with him on the newly clean desk. Booker glances up around a bite of buttered bread and hums questioningly, intrigued. "People who had experienced things they could not move past. Some of it was real and some of it I think they truly wanted to be real, but only lived firmly inside their own minds. I wrote it all down, all the same, because it seemed to help and the University makes use of all such information in some way or other."

"Is that what you want to do for me?"

"Mm, perhaps. I cannot very well leave here without having done anything useful at all, and I don't think I have it in me to abandon you to-" she looks around at the library "- this. Not when it is, to some extent, my area of expertise. And besides which my mother would scold me raw for not offering to help someone in need. She always said it was our duty in life when able, to give to those who were not."

"She sounds like a wonderful woman. And a wise one."

"She is," Nile agrees, her face lighting up with warmth. "It’s thanks to her that I ended up working at the university at all. She refused to allow my brother and I to settle for anything less than what she believed we deserved. Worked harder than anyone I have ever seen before or since to pay for our education."

Booker feels his eyes crinkle, and even if he cannot quite manage a full smile just yet he feels the moment is less far off than before. "It is plain to see you have inherited her spirit."

Nile softens, her joy turning a little quieter, not exactly shy but privately pleased. "Thank you. It’s hard to be apart from them but I always reassure myself that I am living up to what she would want."

The confidence of Nile's statement halts Booker's thoughts abruptly. His lifted spirits sink back into the grave-shaped hole they have occupied for so long. "That is-" he tries to say, to keep the conversation light and easy and not turn it back onto him so soon, but his voice cracks and he takes a bite that makes him nauseous instead. Nile frowns at him and then stills his hand with a light touch when he tries to eat some more.

"I may not know about your family, Booker, but I can be sure they would not want you to be living this way. You should be kinder to yourself."

His family… If only it were not the joyous faces of two young women that sprung to mind at that particular thought. If only that joy did not morph into despair and disgust and pure, unbridled loathing before he could stop the memory from twisting.

"No, Nile. I do not think that is what they want, at all."

* * *

"Is this really necessary?"

The staff of the Big House - so locally known for the sheer dwarfing size of it, thrice that of the next largest home in Elvagyodask, and perched high above its steep streets - continue to buzz around, setting out plates of snack food and tarting up the parlour. One Ibrahim al-Kaysani and his wife Amal, the current occupants and owners of the only fishing company that operated in town, usher Andy through to sit with them, working together to apologise for the mess and inhospitality that had awaited her upon her unexpected arrival. "Really, you should not go to all this trouble. I’m simply dropping by."

"Oh no, no trouble. It is only-"

"- what is merited, for guests! We would not dream of falling short of the bare minimum-"

"- especially for a guest of your calibre, Detective Andromache-"

"- and with what you are doing for us!"

"Speaking of which!" Andy interrupts, trying to keep the panic from her voice. She clenches her fists tightly in her pockets and clears her throat, planting her heels in the doorway and refusing to be towed any further towards the overly-fashionable and no doubt uncomfortable armchairs they are trying to steer her into. "I only came to ask a few questions. Yesterday you said your son was missing?"

"Yusuf, yes."

"Light of our eyes."

"But he-" they exchange an indecipherable look. 

Amal picks up their quick patter. "That is to say he has had his fair share of struggles."

"Not that this is connected! Well..."

"It is, Ibrahim," Amal says gently, resting a hand on her husband's forearm. "He is a danger to himself, and possibly others."

They share another silent conversation before Amal nods and Ibrahim turns to Andy. "We believe he has run away. Where - in this damned town - we haven’t the faintest idea. He is our only son, Detective Andromache. We are worried for him."

 _Oh good, this is going to be such a fun case_ … Andy marches past and sits down with a grim expression, pulling out her trusty notepad and pencil. They slot right into place as though it has not been half her lifetime since she used them last. "Explain, please."

The staff are quickly dismissed and the three of them remain alone in the room; the al-Kaysanis sitting close together on the small loveseat and Andy opposite in an armchair. This time of year there should be a fire blazing in every room of the house but either through lack of care or lack of fuel they haven’t bothered with this one, and are bundled up, on the edge of cold.

Amal starts, clutching Ibrahim's arm tightly. "Yusuf has episodes, where he is not himself. From a child, he would dream awful things and sometimes see them even while he was awake. We tried many methods, but in the end it was art that provided what he needed. The episodes seemed to settle down and he never complained, but then-"

"Last week," Ibrahim takes over as Amal shakes her head and hangs it. "We were rousing for breakfast and he was… Out of sorts. Speaking of odd things, as though he were a walking dreamer. Then he collapsed at the breakfast table. We called for a doctor and she recommended-"

Andy waits until he continues, after a few steadying breaths. "She recommended a dosage of some new drug, and a stay at the hospital for good measure. Yusuf has… In the past we have tried many methods but chemical intervention was always the worst. He was not part of our discussion with the doctor but it is our belief that he…"

"Overheard?" Andy suggests. The couple nod, equally solemn. "I see. And then ran away, presumably." _Understandably_ , she thinks privately, but she can see the distress on Yusuf's parents' faces and is not so callous as to say so out loud.

"Precisely."

"And you have no further information as to where he might go?"

Amal dabs subtly at her eyes and shakes her head but Ibrahim hesitates. Andy watches him closely until he inevitably breaks. Stronger men have, before her stare. "I have no clues about his whereabouts but… There were a few odd messages. From the-"

"Ibrahim," Amal interrupts, frowning. Ibrahim looks at her in question but she turns to Andy with a smile. "That is most definitely not relevant to where Yusuf is, Detective Andromache. I can assure you most ardently."

Andy puts her pencil down and leans forwards. "It is usually me that draws that sort of conclusion, Mrs al-Kaysani. Anything you know could be related, in some way. I urge you to share."

"I do not see why," Amal murmurs, but Ibrahim goes on anyway and Andy's pencil is back up.

He starts with a clearing of his throat. "There have been certain gestures made by the Church."

"What sort of gestures? Hostile ones?"

"No, not exactly. Overtures, perhaps. We were invited suddenly to a great many events. And offered gifts. They seek to be a friend to our family, we believe, but it has been a somewhat sudden change after all our time established here. Yusuf in particular has been the recipient of a significant amount of contact with one of the local priests. The man came to the house a few times, I believe, after we sponsored a local food initiative for the poor that Yusuf took charge of. It seemed harmless at the time. But now…" Ibrahim takes in a great breath and sighs it out shakily. "That is the only thing I can think of that would be a potential lead for you, the only real person Yusuf has had any contact with outside the house."

 _Well_. Andy sits back, letting that stew. The Church again; always behind the worst of things in the town. Not everything bad - but certainly the worst. "You said they left you gifts?" she asks slowly.

"Yes," Amal speaks up. "Some decorations for the house, and some food. The best of the catch, it was once, although that did not consist of much, with the lake as empty it is."

"Anything for Yusuf, specifically? Did his priest bring anything that could have… Triggered his episodes somehow?"

Based on the bewildered expression Amal and Ibrahim turn on one another the answer to that is no. But Andy is - despite recent evidence to the contrary, a nasty drinking habit and a general apathy for life itself - a consummate professional. She cannot leave a stone unturned, even when that stone might only be hiding a rebellious, sick, rich man. They said he was an artist, too. Andy does not know many artists now, has encountered none since moving to Elvagyodask, but she remembers their reputation for being flighty and temperamental, prone to wild, outlandish behaviour. Emotion-led, above all.

 _And he could also be another disappeared victim just like her_ , her mind whispers insistently. _You have to know_.

"Can I see his rooms please?"

Yusuf al-Kaysani is not a tidy man. That is the first thing that strikes Andy upon entering his private rooms, up in his own wing of the house. The second thing is that most, if not all, of the mess is related to the aforementioned art. There are paint brushes and paints; canvases and frames; rags and palettes. All scattered over every available surface or leaned up against the walls. There are a few pieces hung - nicer ones, with light and simple depictions of the forest or sky and a single portrait of the family - but they seem to have been an afterthought rather than the true heart of his work.

His bedroom is a marked improvement. While still covered in canvases, it is at least less of a mess. The actual art creation appears to be contained to the living area with the bedroom reserved for storage of select completed pieces, all but a few turned to face away from the room, into the walls, to remain hidden. The ones that are on display are- unsettling, to say the least. Dark and foggy shapes, the odd hint of light from up high that barely filters down through the brooding colours of the rest of the painting. One, however, is different from the rest. Instead of the dim grey-green-brown murk and the single point of light; it seems to be a riot of deep turquoise and sickly yellow and green, raised where parts have been painted over and over and over until the layers are so thick they stand out from the canvas. It could be Andy's imagination but the curling lines seem to move and shift, and- _are those eyes in the very centre?_

She rears back, heart thumping wildly, unsure what had prompted such a visceral reaction. She only knows she does _not_ want to look at the painting again. Poor Yusuf al-Kaysani, maybe he _is_ going mad - to have painted this and then placed it in his room to watch while he sleeps...

"Oh goodness," Amal gasps, seeing the same piece. She covers her mouth with her hands and Ibrahim steps in to steady her, paling at her side.

"That is unlike the ones before…" he whispers faintly, ushering Amal out quickly. Andy follows all too eagerly, unwilling to be left in the room with the eerie thing. She manages a quick final look over the room to identify anything out of place before closing the door behind her, mostly satisfied that there had not been any missed clues.

They all hover awkwardly in the foyer after fleeing from Yusuf’s rooms, while Amal and Ibrahim hold one another in the chilly building and Andy thinks hard. She lifts her head and looks at them, rubbing the paper of the notepad absently. They both startle a little when she speaks. 

"Before I leave then - what was the name of the priest who visited him? I should like to pay him a visit."

"Oh, we never heard a name but," Ibrahim lifts an arm around his wife, "he was from the church just down below that sits at the end of Lofty Park."

 _Where she and Nile had eaten, only the night before_. Andy fights back a curse and nods, holding her hand out to each in turn for a brisk shake, and takes her leave quickly. The image of the quiet priest smiling at Nile in surprise is burned into her mind’s eye.

_Years without anything at all happening in town and now in the space of a week a man's visions return; a newcomer appears and the same man vanishes? And with the Church acting bizarrely as well..._

It feels like danger is in the air and sleepy, sluggish Elvagyodask is stirring back to life. But not for any benevolent purpose, no. This town has never thrived on good fortune and prosperity; only misery and desperation and madness. And what a time for it to do so, just as she most desperately wants to drown in cheap booze and forget the date for a while until the dancing ghosts of memory lie back down in their graves and leave her alone. _Fuck_ , Andy thinks, her boots crunching the stones underfoot as she walks the long drive down from the Big House into town again, heading for the Lofty Park church. _Fuck_ , and - _why me?_

* * *

Lofty Park was - like most of the sparse place names in Elvagyodask - named as frugally and efficiently as possible; for being the highest altitude park in the steep town. The little church that sat at one end did not have a name of its own, and nor did the streets nearby, simply referred to by association and proximity with the park itself. Elvagyodask had, even in times of good fortune, never overly concerned itself with maintaining any kind of air of opulence. That kind of thinking simply bled out into the mountain air. Clothes that were frivolous and fanciful became practical and plain; hands made for fine work and easy living roughened and strengthened from just living in the area; people who were light and optimistic settled for a day-to-day cynical pragmatism before they realised they had changed at all.

Andy has not ever been the frivolous, optimistic type, really - but no one can deny she's the poster child for cynical pragmatists, as things stand.

It is that very cynical pragmatism however, that has her determinedly marching up to the Lofty Park church an hour after leaving the al-Kaysanis' at the Big House. The table that had been set up for serving food the night before is still out, just tucked upright on end against the stone wall of the building. The day is dull, season taking its sharp downward turn to dive towards winter, and the clouds are thick overhead. The church is lit from within but feels anything but welcoming - through the warped and discoloured glass, cheaply bought and even more cheaply built into the small windows, there is the faintest sickly glow of candlelight.

"I hope you're in there," Andy mutters to herself, squaring her shoulders and ignoring the flutter in her fingers that wants to reach for a shot glass and bolster herself with liquid courage. Not courage to do her job, but courage to _keep_ doing it, when really all she would like to do is lie down on her kitchen floor and forget the sound of Quỳnh's laughter, so loudly ringing in her ears. It echoes through the quiet afternoon air, and Andy winces.

She walks inside quickly. She tells herself it is not to escape the haunting sounds in her own mind. She lies.

Inside, the church is plain and simple, the Elvagyodask standard. Lines of wooden pews are arranged in thick rows from right up by the door all the way to the front. There is a small pulpit there, though really it is nothing more than a wooden lectern set up for the priest to lay his papers on. Beside it on the centre dais sits a stone basin, and on the opposite wall to the lectern there lies a little table full of the majority of the candles responsible for the light spilling outside. 

Andy takes it all in with a raised eyebrow, surprised to see a few people inside as well. Two older women are sitting together praying, a young man hurries out past her with his hood already up to face the cold outside, and the expected priest tends to the rest of the candles dotted around the room. He startles when she approaches, clearing her throat, but then offers a polite smile.

"Andromache. Detective. I need a word," Andy announces before he has time to weasel his way out of seeing her. To her surprise the priest just blinks and then nods, smile dropping in favour of a serious expression.

"Do you need privacy?" he asks, and when she nods curtly he leads her through the door by the lectern to a small room that must be used primarily as a study for his work. Andy watches him, trying to stay alert for anything out of the ordinary. Well, out of the ordinary for a priest in Elvagyodask, which is admittedly a high bar. He seems nervous, this one, but willing enough to help, clearing the spare chair across from a cluttered desk with a soft apology and dumping the things off it onto a little bookshelf behind. When he walks around to take his own seat and gestures for her to join him they sit opposite each other. He rakes his hands back through his hair and then lays them neatly folded one on top of the other in front of him, and meets her gaze evenly. "How can I help, Detective Andromache?"

"I have reason to believe you might know something about the whereabouts of one Yusuf al-Kaysani. Is that true?" Andy launches in. The priest looks taken aback and he wets his lips before replying.

"Yusuf al-Kaysani? The son of the company manager, al-Kaysani?" he confirms. "Why would I know anything about him?"

"His parents reported you were a frequent visitor of his. He's been missing for a few days now, and they believe him to be in danger. Anything you fail to report could lead to further risk for him or others."

"Others?" the priest exclaims, a little too passionately and offended to be anything but honest. And if Andy had not known he was evading the truth already then she would know now. "I mean, sorry, but is there something the matter with him?"

Andy blinks coolly across the desk. "That is not information I can share. Do you admit you were in contact with Mr al-Kaysani recently?"

"I- yes. I saw him at the house sometimes. We worked together on the food initiative his parents pioneered. The one you enjoyed the fruits of, if I remember rightly."

"You have a good memory for faces."

The priest's expression turns flat and serene. Andy narrows her eyes. "I do. And I can tell you, with that in mind, that I do not know where Yusuf is right now. I was not aware his parents had reported him missing, even."

"He hasn't been by in the evenings? Didn't leave you a message? Are you not friends?" Andy presses, pulling out her notebook now she isn't focused on simply reading the man. The priest meets her searching stare with the serenity firmly in place now, shuttered closed over his expressions so blandly it's obvious he's still not being wholly truthful. But unlike before, now Andy cannot tell _how_. 

"We are to an extent, as much as any two in our respective positions can be. We share a few common goals, and Yusuf is… Easy to get along with."

"Right. And messages?"

"No, nothing left to me. We always prefer to communicate face to face anyway, with visits. Sometimes-" Andy sits up straighter when the priest cuts himself off so hard he nearly chokes, gripping his own hands tightly. She raises an eyebrow because she is not going to let that go, and he smiles tightly before finishing the thought, slowly and reluctantly. "Sometimes he talks through his art, through sketches. But no messages."

"Huh." She glances down at her notebook while she organises her thoughts, only to end up spotting the underlined words; 'threats?' and 'overtures?' "Another question then, leaving Yusuf aside for now-" the priest relaxes, only enough for Andy to see because she knows what to look for, "- have you heard any news about motions to contact the al-Kaysani family as a whole?" 

He looks puzzled so she tries to explain. "There have been certain actions on behalf of the Church towards the family - I believe gifts, and invites to occasions that were not merited previously. It seems odd, after so long, for the relationship to change that much in such a short time."

The room goes quiet as the priest looks at her, his eyes narrowed ever so slightly and his lips parted the same. Out in the main space there are footsteps - one or both of the praying women moving forwards to the altar cross which, now that Andy thinks about it, had been missing from behind the stone basin. Just a blank space on the raised floor.

 _\- missing cross?_ gets added to the notebook page.

"I'm not sure why that would be considered a bad thing…" the priest says slowly, unfolding his hands and placing them back again carefully, the bottom one now on top.

"Normally; perhaps not. But the timing is suspect with Yusuf's disappearance, and without any clear trigger for the change of heart. Which is why I had hoped you might have an insight for me."

"Well it is definitely not-" his mouth works silently and his top fingers drum just the once. "It is not me you should talk to. I am rarely the first to hear of such things, being up here, and I am very far down the chain of decision-making." With that he settles again, sitting up straighter. "I am sorry I cannot be of help with Yusuf. I will keep an eye out for him. But as for the actions of my fellow priests I cannot say. I only hope you will find more answers elsewhere."

It is as clear a dismissal as Andy has ever heard, and she wants desperately to hold firm and dig in deeper, until he cracks and reveals what he's hiding. But to anger a priest is to anger the Church and without knowing more about the machinations behind the scenes she is not ready to risk that attention turning her way. 

"Alright, I'll get out of your hair. I will call by again if I need anything else from you." The priest opens his mouth to protest but Andy vindictively just talks over him. "Thank you for your help…?"

"Nicolò, Brother Nicolò." Not 'Father'; and yet in charge of a whole church himself, when there are only three in town, including the main church on the north side. _Odd_.

They stand and Andy allows herself to be ushered back out, stopping in front of the altar. She glances at the empty space and tilts her head, casual as can be. "You might be missing something there, if I know anything at all about churches, Brother Nicolò."

"It was damaged. We are awaiting a replacement or for someone to fix it," he replies, quietly, his eyes lingering on the empty space as well. A shadow of something crosses his face for a moment and his lips tighten, but then the doors open and an old man shuffles in, calling in a croaky voice for the priest's time. Nicolò raises a hand to greet him past Andy's shoulder and then gives her an unreadable look and a quick nod, before moving to meet the newcomer.

Andy gazes at the empty spot for a while longer. The basin directly in front is beautifully carved, with oceanic shapes and the impression of deep waves under the water that sits in the bowl. The water itself is dark and murky like the water of the lake, or perhaps it is a trick of the light and the stone the bowl is made of. Either way Andy shivers, glancing over to the table of candles and feeling the strangest urge to light one.

For whose soul; she is not sure. Hers? Quỳnh's? Yusuf, or even Nile's?

The door falls shut with a low, dull thud behind her when she emerges back into the open air, and it feels no colder than inside, despite the brisk wind.

Fucking _Elvagyodask_.

* * *

The atmosphere between them had sombered after Booker's quiet but certain declaration. Nile had faltered in the face of such surety, unable to decide between simple comfort or trying to get him to open up more. Neither had felt particularly appropriate under the circumstances and Booker had in fact had an air of gratitude when she let the conversation die a dignified death.

Nile leans in the doorway again for the third time in as many quarter-hours, watching the man go about his tasks. He is cleaning now at least, not simply rubbing the same spot over and over, and the tension in his shoulders under that grubby, thin shirt has eased away somewhat. His jacket has been shed on the back of a chair, revealing just how thin he actually is underneath - not quite skin and bones but far from healthy. She feels her mother's instincts to feed him up rise and reins them in for now.

Slow and steady has seemed to work best with Booker, thus far, but he is more fragile than before after her pushing, and a little break will not hurt him. 

Besides which the study will not organise itself. There haven't been any more surprises since the hidden draw of photographs, but then again Nile hasn't done more than glance through most of the scribbled pages of notes in an effort to categorise them for now, with a view to making actually reading through them significantly easier later on. 

There are currently three piles: Booker's research notes, case notes and files, and miscellaneous. Every good filing system should have a miscellaneous section, Nile thinks, and hers is a decent size already. There are the photographs, of course, but also rambles that seem unrelated to anything else, perhaps more like diary entries. When she finds the tenth, or maybe twentieth page and peers a little closer she sees they are in fact exactly that - diary entries, but written in the form of what looks to be letters. Nile discards the idea that they could actually be letters because none of them are signed off and the addressee seems… It seems to be a word in the local language that she does not understand, rather than a name. Conscience perhaps? 

It takes all day but by some minor miracle she does get through it. Booker has moved onto cleaning the stacks and windows when she leaves the room behind with no small amount of relief, emerging back into the larger space. Nile is not claustrophobic, not really, but the walls had been starting to give the distinct impression of closing in around her and even keeping the door open had not helped much. It had been too quiet, maybe, without any real noise from Booker - Nile is used to the background din of typewriters and footsteps and voices murmuring from other offices and staff in the university hallways. This silence is nowhere near as comforting a background to work to.

"How are you faring?" she asks, brushing the dust off her shirt. It falls straight to the carpet but without better equipment they aren't going to be able to do anything about the carpets anyway; better to declare them a lost cause and worry about the things they can sort out instead. Booker turns to look at her and finishes nudging some of the books back into place. The windows are behind him, bringing in the same dark light that Elvagyodask seems to love - the light of day obscured by clouds, but there nonetheless. Nile looks out at the lake below them and the few buildings between it and her, and with her eyes follows the odd figure or two making their way around the streets and docks.

"Well enough," Booker replies, moving to the window she is looking out from to wipe the mildew and damp from the sill, pushing it open to clean it more thoroughly. The air that blows in stinks, but Booker does not flinch, even though Nile has to fight the urge to retch. He must be used to it by now, she thinks, having lived here for… Actually that seems a perfectly reasonable, safe topic to pursue. 

"How long have you lived in town?" she asks curiously, picking up a cloth to join him.

"Let's see, I moved maybe three, four months before the… Before everything happened. Twenty years and a few months now, it must be."

"Why did you move?" Nile wonders. Booker's face starts to lift but then shutters closed.

He turns back to the window, pulling it firmly shut and locking it tightly, moving to repeat the process with the next one. His tired blue eyes look through the glass at the lake but Nile gets the impression that he is not seeing it at all. Or perhaps he is looking _through_ it somehow, to what lies within. "Andy asked me to," Booker croaks after a minute of silence. "I came to town specifically to start working with her. She said she needed my help with a case, relevant to the work I was doing at the time."

"That was when you arrived? Just like me then."

It elicits a soft scoff, but it isn't a nasty sound. His eyes seem just a little lighter when he turns to her, present again. "In some ways yes. But in most others I think you are not like me at all, Nile. You are very… You."

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Nile teases back with a grin, jabbing an elbow his way that he dodges with a huff. He's almost - _almost_ \- smiling, and it warms her up from the chill of the open windows to see it.

"It means that you are a breath of fresh air in a dusty old library. An unexpected change on the wind."

"Poetry now, Booker? I should add it to the list of things I am learning about you through all those papers."

"You-" he looks at her. "What are you learning?"

The fragility and mixed hope and hesitancy in his voice soften her voice when she replies, clasping his upper arm briefly with a reassuring grip. "Mostly that you do not know the first thing about organising yourself, my good man. But the job is done, the day is dying, and I am more dust than woman at this point. Finish those windows and then really, this time I insist. There must be somewhere you can go to get clean?"

Booker raises an eyebrow, fidgeting with the cloth. "Even if there were, I have nothing but these clothes to wear. Is that not a waste?"

"If it makes you feel better then it is never a waste," Nile replies sternly. "But I suppose you could also use a shopping trip. I need new boots - would you meet me at my lodgings tomorrow? Or… Here?" she adds when a flash of pure panic twists across his face like lightning. He sighs and shakes his head.

"I prefer not to leave the library unnecessarily these days, Nile."

"You would be doing me a large favour - I hate shopping."

When he looks up she is ready, smiling hopefully. Booker twists the cloth one last time and then nods, just a quick jerky motion of his head that seems very forced but will do. Nile pats his shoulder and takes her leave, bidding him a goodnight.

She turns her brain off somewhat on her way through the streets, letting the day fall away and her mind relax while her feet carry her through town. The smell is strong as ever but the dark light does not stop her smiling. "Is it too soon to say we're getting somewhere?" Nile asks the little doll in her pocket. "Because it feels as though we might be getting somewhere. Although you know, I was always told to be careful getting ahead of myself. These things take delicate work, and there are backward steps to come before crossing the finish line no doubt."

The doll does not reply, but Nile feels better anyway, resolving to reign in her overabundance of enthusiasm. She ends up somehow passing the Iron Coffin, but a dip inside shows a lack of Andy to greet or bother. Another day; another dearth of new shoes, unfortunately, but Nile is happy enough with the rest of her progress to ignore her discomfort. Tomorrow she will put on a few more pairs of socks, instead.

With the option of Andy exhausted Nile turns to thoughts of food. It couldn't hurt to visit the church again, could it? The meal had been hearty enough, and warm, and really Nile cannot help but roll her eyes at Andy's vehement objection to the priest that had served them. The detective might have had some unpleasant experiences with the institution but Nile has not, and judging one priest based on the words of someone she does not yet fully trust seems unkind, unfair and immoral. Would she want to be so judged by someone with memories of the less friendly staff employed by Miskatonic University? No.

And there is food involved. Andy's warning remains not forgotten but gently set aside, and Nile turns towards the park and the church and the dinner that hopefully awaits.

Her footsteps echo a little on the damp stone street. Once or twice someone hurries by but Elvagyodask has remained largely quiet around her. It doesn't hum like the towns and cities she knows from America, sleepy in the way only Europe seems to manage, where the quiet feels more _dormant_ than anything else, and this one in particular. A great hibernating beast nestled silently in the embrace of the two mountains that corner it, feeding or being fed by the lake that oozes and laps at its metaphorical toes.

She is lost in thought when someone barges by. Two someones, in fact, talking in low voices to each other. The larger one - a broad and scowling man with a short beard and bowler hat - knocks into her shoulder and just shoots her a nasty look when she yelps in alarm and protest. His companion tugs him onwards, back to the conversation as they hurry on down the street, and Nile forces herself to not regret the missed opportunity to give him an earful. Alone and far from home it does not seem like the best idea to be starting fights, let alone with large brutes, and while outnumbered.

The church awaits ahead, so Nile misses the absence of the little doll, knocked to the floor in the gloom. Lost to the street.

"Evening," she murmurs when she gets to the front of the dinner queue. The same priest as before looks at her and his expression softens happily.

"Good evening,” he says in thick but clear enough English. “One bowl, tonight?" The atmosphere seems to demand they talk softly, a reverent hush over the shuffling groups of people, muting the stamp of cold feet and the faint click of wooden spoons in bowls. It is a stew-type thing again, with small bread buns and hot cider off to the side heating over a wrought iron fire pit, and like the day before there does not seem to be any fish involved in the dish, despite the pervasive smell. There are a few braziers scattered around, in the process of being lit for the night, to help the visitors stay warm. A small point of community in this strange place, like the Coffin or the living room of the Jerusalem Inn, promising that there can be heart and soul to find, even here.

"Yes, thank you." 

He ducks his head, shyly - fancy that. "Enjoy your meal, may it warm you," he tells her gently. Nile takes her bowl and nods at him, and then moves away to find somewhere to hover while she eats. She spies the wall, a decent height to hop up and sit on, making a bee-line for it before it can be claimed. Only it seems someone else has had the same idea.

"Oh, hello you! Sorry!" a voice exclaims when Nile is bumped from the side for the second time that night. She fights not to snap back and turns instead to see the same warm brown eyes and soft smile from that morning in the boarding house hall, cradling a book and looking very apologetic. "We must stop meeting like this, twice is a habit waiting to form," Mr. Mysterious from number four grins, using the book to gesture to the wall.

"I am certainly interested in alternative methods of greeting, if you have any to suggest," Nile replies. She wriggles herself up onto it, feet brushing the floor, and shuffles over to give him space to sit alongside her if he wishes. He lights up at the invitation and settles into place, smoothing his hand over the book that - now that Nile looks at it properly - is evidently a sketchbook rather than a work of fiction. He chuckles and balances it in his lap to hold his hand out.

"How about we start with a classic introduction? Call me Joe. I believe we are neighbours for the time being."

Nile nods, moving her bowl to one hand to return the shake. No last name - interesting. It does not confirm her theory of the rich man with a secret lover but it doesn’t _not_ confirm it either. "Nile," she offers back, smiling. Even if he turns out to be a bit of a cad he has been friendly and polite enough to merit her friendliness. "I do believe we are. Are you an artist?"

They look down at the book and Joe laughs softly, brushing his palm over it again. "I suppose I am. I make art, at least."

"Which traditionally, would qualify you for the title."

"Traditionally it would," he agrees, but it is a little less open than before. "Have you been coming to these dinners very long?" Joe looks at her, blinking with perfect innocence as though the change of subject is not incredibly obvious. Nile just goes with it, speaking in between mouthfuls.

"It's my second. I was brought along last night, and in all honesty it's the only place I know to go to for hot food so far. I'm not particularly well travelled through the town yet."

"A newcomer?" Joe asks, surprised. "How fascinating. What do you think so far?"

Nile purses her lips and it is all the reply Joe needs before he starts laughing, generally quiet but still loud enough to startle a few of the nearby customers. The priest looks over as well but Nile cannot read his expression at this distance and he quickly turns back to the queue he has to serve. "It's not- that is to say-"

"It's quite alright, Nile, I understand. This is no Paris or Rome. But your accent is from America, I think?"

"That's right, Massachusetts specifically. Well, Chicago raised, but more recently Massachusetts."

Joe frowns, looking as confused as Nile has come to expect most non-Americans will be when she talks about specifics of geography. "Ah, forgive me," he says sheepishly. "I am not sure I know it."

While Nile details the East Coast and her little corner of it Joe listens intently, his attention never wavering. It is only when she mentions Arkham and Miskatonic that his brow twitches a minute amount, but nothing further happens.

It twitches again though when they move to talk of her work, more noticeably, although he smooths it to reply. "It is not every day we have new people joining the town. In fact m-" he breaks off into a cough, resurfacing with a charming smile. "In fact the family that runs the company here, they were some of the last. Oh, and there was a Detective from out of town, I believe? And perhaps others, I suppose I am not exactly keeping track of all the comings and goings around the place!"

"Well, there is certainly another, as it happens."

"Oh?"

"Yes, he works in the library. He’s the reason I came, actually - I was sent on behalf of the University to aid in some research he was doing. Although, it has turned out to be a somewhat different job in reality. I've been preparing to document the ah, the incident that occurred here, he was involved in the original investigation, the disappearance of that young woman? You must have been young then. Forgive my morbidity but I find it a little fascinating."

Joe stares at her, for so long Nile wonders if he's had a stroke or if she has unforgivably offended him. He doesn't breathe, until he heaves a few deep gulps of air and squeezes the sketchbook so tightly it bends a little in his hands. Then he coughs again, shaking his head hard, and straightens back up, utterly fine again. "Ah yes, that whole affair. Nasty business, although I confess I know very little of it. The whole thing occurred down in the lower town, and I was very sheltered, at that age."

"Concerned parents?"

"Oh yes, but for my own sake, not due to the other goings on."

"I see." In the silence that falls comfortably between them then, Nile finishes her food, watching the people go by. Joe's face is fixed on the table, and the priest, and his index finger moves absently on the sketchbook cover as though he is drawing him in his head. It occurs to Nile then that he'd brought the book but had yet to open it, and also that despite the warmth of the food and Joe beside her - the wall is still very cold and she has been sitting on it a fair while.

She slides off, turning around to shake his hand again. "Well Joe, it has been a pleasure. I shall look forward to seeing you around town again at some point no doubt, but hopefully at a more appropriate distance. Let’s not make that habit, hm?"

"I quite concur, Nile," Joe agrees, shaking her hand firmly. "Have a good night, retire safely. Perhaps I will see you back here again tomorrow - I find myself here most nights."

"I don’t see why not. Until next time then, good night!"

He waves her off, and has sat back in place with the book now open, shadowed by the trees behind, by the time she has deposited her used bowl and spoon and glanced back. Whatever Joe is sketching it appears to be trying to forcefully leap out of him, his hand rapid with furious strokes. Perhaps next time Nile will be able to wheedle a glimpse out of him.

But in the meantime her bed awaits her.

And this time while she walks them the streets feel less quiet; invisible eyes seem to watch from every angle, shadows hover between the faint and queasy light from the gas lanterns, footsteps echo too close by and yet have no origin. By the time Nile makes it to the boarding house her heart is racing and her nerves are shot, even steel as they are. She leaps into bed and allows herself the indulgence of hiding under the covers, forgoing any nighttime rituals to get away from the insistent, gnawing feeling that there is a monster under the bed.

The curtains flutter and the lake glints down below past the eerie streets. Nile's sleep is far from peaceful. And hers are not the only dreams to be full of foul things that night. 

_Booker attempts to clean the library_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This is a reminder to have a break if you haven't already! Food, water, a nice stretch, or even some sleep - now is the time!_ :)


	4. From the other side

Nicolò di Genova, more commonly known as Brother Nicolò, is a priest. Not just by vocation but by heritage - he is a priest from a family of priests, some might say destined to take on the work as soon as he had grown old enough. As a boy he was serious and quiet, well suited to studying the texts and listening to the stories and lessons imparted by the many religious men and women he was placed with to learn from. His mother declared him a natural when he sang hymns before he spoke full sentences, and his father had him take his first blessing in the cold waters of the lake a full three years earlier than any other child of his cohort. His grandfather had nodded the first time Nicolò had returned home as a teenager, his expression drawn and fingers fretful, and then had sat him down to teach Nicolò about the isolation and the distance that would now grow between him and the rest of the town - for to serve the Church in Elvagyodask was to be apart from the people it sheltered.

So he is a priest before he is anything else, or rather - the Church would have it be so.

But Nicolò has, very recently and very unexpectedly, found that he is also a man. He is a man whose heart flutters and leaps and whirls when the right sight greets his eyes; a man whose body rejoices at the touch of another (but just this one precious other); a man in love.

And _oh_ , how he loves. Is there anyone at all in the world and beyond like his artist? Have two souls ever sung to each other in quite so sweet a harmony? Nicolò is in rapture when they simply stand close together - he ascends far beyond the dull grey material plane when standing leads to touching to kissing to _more_. In those moments he forgets to be anything but Nicolò - no; Nicky, he is Nicky then, and he loves that as much as he loves the tongue that says it, and the lips that formed it for him.

It is still new, and vulnerable, and it will shatter eventually, as all hopeful things do in Elvagyodask. 

* * *

"My love, you are thinking very hard."

_The dreams came again, they caught you, hurt you, you were-_

"Nicky, sweet one, look at me. Please?"

_\- silently screaming in the dark of night._

"Nicky. I know you're awake." Dry lips brush over Nicky's shoulder, hands at his waist urge him over onto his back. Joe is there when he looks up, his fingers coming up to brush over Nicky's face, travelling the lines of it tenderly. They follow the same pattern as always, brows and nose, under his eyes, following his cheekbone down to his jaw and under to stop below his chin. His face is tipped up for a sweet kiss and the pattern is complete. Nicky relaxes again at last. "Back with me?" Joe asks, hooking his chin over Nicky's shoulder when they roll back into position again, tucked back to front on the little bed. There is barely enough room for the two of them but they make it work, and there is something about the tight quarters and the lack of space between them that feels cosy and romantic. Nicky sighs and tugs on Joe's arm, holding it just that bit more securely around his waist.

"It was a bad night."

The silence behind him all of a sudden is deafening. Nicky winces, wondering if he has said the wrong thing and ruptured their bubble of paradise before it has barely bloomed around them. But Joe just presses his face firmly against the top of Nicky's spine and exhales roughly, squeezing him to comfort them both. "I know," he says, or rather croaks, voice hoarse and painful to hear this morning. "My throat feels raw."

"You did not make a sound," Nicky whispers plaintively, closing his eyes.

"How long did it last?"

 _Too long, my gentle heart, too long,_ Nicky thinks. _I could not wake you. You were lost to me yet lay right by my side._ Joe sighs, taking the silence for the response it is. That has been the most stunning, wonderful thing about Joe right from the very start- his ability to intrinsically understand every word Nicky did not say, the ones he spoke with his eyes and hands and heart instead. He has never had to be loud around Joe because his quiet is not taken as quiet. Joe fills the air with words given voice and Nicky speaks right back and they share conversations that last for hours and delve down soul-deep, utterly bare to one another. It has been this way since their second meeting, past the formalities of work and intrigued by the spirit they each saw in the other.

"Did I scare you?" Joe asks, breaking the quiet. Nicky nods his head, and feels the tension still in Joe's chest when he breathes, not quite deep enough. He turns, the one to nudge them this time, and lays fully over Joe, weighing him down comfortably into the thin mattress that they have made luxurious with layers of blankets. Nicky props his chin on Joe's sternum and presses his palms to either side of his ribs, feeling them move under the thin undershirt. Joe cradles him within the warm embrace of his arms and legs and smiles down, still a tad too thinly for Nicky's liking. He wriggles up and cups Joe's face instead, and kisses him, thumbs smoothing over the scratchy line of where his beard starts, until Joe goes pleasantly loose and his hands stop gripping Nicky’s arms quite so desperately. "You are a balm, my love," the artist murmurs gratefully, pressing one last kiss to his nose before dropping his head back onto the pillow. "How would I weather this world without you?"

"You are stronger than needing me to help," Nicky objects, voice soft. "But I am glad to be here for you to lean on, nonetheless."

"As am I," Joe agrees. "Shall I tell you another story now that we are both awake with no hope of returning to sleep? The morning is not yet upon us and I feel the need to weave some beauty in the wake of the night." Nicky nods eagerly, and turns his head to listen to the beat of his lover's heart, and feel the rumble of his voice as closely as possible.

He listens to Joe's story - a fish today, trapped in a glass bowl and desperate to visit the sea that it can see from the windowsill it sits on - and tries to hear what Joe is actually telling him. All the stories he tells are wonderful, like his art, but Nicky also knows they are pieces of the grander puzzle that is his Joe. One part is the artist; another the scion of the al-Kaysani family trading company. Some of his stories are the tiniest of pieces - a glimpse at a feeling, or a memory turned into an amusing tale. Others are larger and more allegorical, and Nicky drinks them all in equally, laying them out side by side in his head until they slot together and add to his picture of the man in his bed, growing all the time, seemingly never-ending. He hopes the wonder of it all never fades, but is quite sure that if it does, it will only fade into a deep, contented _knowing_ , between them.

But thoughts like those are wistfully naïve at best and foolishly ignorant at worst. That future is a dream on a harsh winter's wind, carried away with biting chill whenever he tries to grasp it, biting at his outstretched fingertips to discourage him from reaching.

A tap on his nose signals the story's end. "The water was not so bad at all, with the other little fish there."

"What if it were not another fish but a cat that had come to offer companionship?" Nicky asks, sitting up and stretching his arms over his head to work out the cracks and pops in his bones. The curtains are starting to glow faintly with the beginnings of daylight. Through the thin door they hear someone emerge, shuffling down the hall to use the bathroom. Joe smiles and then turns back to Nicky, pushing up on his elbows.

He purses his lips. "Then would the companionship be any less valuable?" he asks. "The fish was lonely, beyond all other things. Does it matter if that loneliness is vanquished by a fish, a cat, or… An ass?"

Nicky snorts softly at the thought of such a beast wandering around the fine home that Joe had described for the fish, one Nicky had recognised the skeleton of, the route of the halls, the colours of the walls. "If all the fish desired was companionship and conversation then perhaps not. But if it wants a kindred spirit to share its life with, someone to understand and be close to? Then the others cannot cross that barrier - the water will always keep them out."

"Ah the water, the water. We live it and breathe it, here."

"Only fish can breathe water," Nicky points out, climbing out of bed to get dressed. Joe follows him, slipping into his arms before he can do more than pick up his shirt. He twines around him, presses their foreheads together.

"Are we not all fish, in Elvagyodask? Beholden to the lake in all things…"

Nicky just looks at him, eyebrows pushing together. His downturned lips ache for the touch of Joe's and Joe knows, obliges as he always does - eagerly and immediately. Nicky murmurs against his mouth, brushing Joe’s cheek with his nose.

"You are no fish nor cat, but a bird flying high above us all, Yusuf. How I love to watch you soar."

"And you say I am the one with the pretty words…" Joe smiles, cups his cheek gently, and then steps away. "Your people and work await you."

"Will you await me?" Nicky asks, wrapping up in his thin woolen coat. "Here, where you're safe and hidden?"

"Nicky-"

"She is not going to give up, Joe. You did not see her eyes. I expect she might even return as soon as today to visit me. You will have to await me, or go home and explain to your parents that you are not missing."

"I will not go back," Joe says firmly, flicking his hand out dismissively. "Not while they talk about _doctors_ and _drugs_ and sending me to the hospital!"

"Joe, hush, please my love. I was not saying-"

They freeze when the pipes rattle through the building, heralding the return of their neighbour to the room down the hall. Joe reaches for his hands in their held quiet, kissing his knuckles one at a time and rubbing his thumb over the backs of Nicky's fingers. He is not playing fair but Nicky has never quite been able to mind. "She has closed the door, dear heart," Joe whispers a few moments later. "The coast is clear. You can make your escape."

Nicky raises an eyebrow and resolves to ask him how he knows their neighbour is a woman later, when he is back in Joe's arms after the day and long evening is done. He really does need to leave, to get to the church in time to be present for any visitors. The next service he has to give requires a little extra preparation in advance and the church building always demands some caretaking.

Joe graces him with a last soft kiss at the door, after which Nicolò hurries off out into the cold, turning from man back to priest when his feet hit the street and lead him back towards his other life.

  
  


* * *

_How long ago did he last live anywhere that wasn't the library?_ Booker squints at the coffee table, sipping his tea and trying to think. He had kept his first set of rented rooms long after the case had drawn to its terrible and irreversible conclusion, drinking and fighting and despairing his way to ruin within them. And then, belatedly, the all-consuming sadness had first set in, only to be upended by a truly terrifying dream that had set Booker’s feet temporarily back on the righteous path of obsessed, feverish research - trying to fix it _fix this he has to fix what he broke-_

Andy had not been the slightest bit impressed when he had shown up at her door a year and a half after they had last spoken. She had not been impressed at all. Why _hadn't_ he left then, when she’d told him to? He had wanted to, and yet…

No. He had not wanted to at all. Because Andy was here and Quỳnh was here somewhere beneath the grey waves all because of his mistakes. How could he leave her (them) behind to drown in his imagination, all alone forevermore? How could he return to a place that no longer would recognise him as the man that had left, with such honour and pride?

The obsession had faded into a blur of madness into a desperate search for something, some way to keep going. The bars and fights turned to drinking alone, wandering the streets, wandering the _docks_ . Finding laudanum had been the best thing to happen to him since. It had been his best option in a dire time and he was in a way, grateful for it. Grateful for the way it lulled him to sleep in his darkest nights, until it was lulling him to sleep during his waking nightmares, and then lulling him _back_ to sleep when he awoke to reality, because he was more dreamer than man by that point.

Somewhere in there, he remembers, the money he had been earning from working with Andy had been cut off, or run out. His landlord had turfed him out with his meagre remaining possessions and he had moved into the library. To live like a rat squatting in an abandoned house - stealing out to take food from the town hall kitchens or brave the edges of the market when he rose up high enough from his drug-laden drowning to realise he was hungry; emerging from the side door and venturing down to the docks to buy some more of his bottled safety blanket when he ran dangerously low.

_Had years really passed like that? Quick as a flash, yet also long and slow as watching a clock tick a minute feels..._

_Nile should be here soon_ , Booker tells himself, and tries not to miss the taste of oblivion that sat so bittersweet on his tongue. He covers the memory and the urge with scalding tea instead and when that is all gone he stands up from the chaise longue and paces. He needs to do something with his hands.

The cushions are plumped and the blankets neatly folded only a few minutes later and Booker-

He feels better, in fact, looking at the tidy room that has been his cave of solitude for so long. Buried deep within him is the smallest sense of pride at his achievement. Booker still cannot smile but he gets very, very close in that moment.

"Booker?" Nile calls from the entrance, breezing through and around the reception where he meets her. "There you are. I brought breakfast again."

"Thank you Nile. Are you well today?" Now that he peers more closely she seems unusually dishevelled - her blue shirt is rumpled at the collar and her braided bun is lopsided.

Nile brushes him off with a tired smile, laying out the two thick pastries she's brought. "Here, eat up. They aren’t very warm anymore but they will do the trick for now. We will be going to shop after all - so I thought you might be able to show me where to get something decent for lunch."

"Oh well, there is the market. Everything you need will be there, and the shops around could have the shoes you were searching for," Booker explains, sitting beside her and tucking in. It is another flavour to distract from the noticeable lack of laudanum he has had today, so he savours it slowly.

"A market you say? I think I might have passed it by," Nile hums, her eyes wandering. They catch on the tidied room behind them through the open door and she turns to him, lighting up all the way at last. "Booker! Look at you. You'll be a new man before the day is out. Just that shower left, now."

He huffs along to her laughter and relishes the brightness of the moment. And then it sinks in.

They're going outside. _Booker_ is going outside. He hasn’t done that in… In…

"Booker? Remember the breathing. In and out, just like always."

Nile's voice guides him steadily back to the present but the concern does not fade from her expression even though the hand she had placed on his shoulder drops away. "If you really cannot do this now then I will gladly go alone and bring you back what you need."

"No, I- no. I would like to accompany you. It will be good, I think?"

"I would agree, but you look rather pale."

"Please. I must try, even just to get to the door. Will you- can you be patient with me? If I need to stop?"

Her eyes are steady when he lifts his to meet them. "Even if it takes all day."

Luckily for the both of them - and to Booker's great and shocked relief - it does not take all day to get past the door of the library. He can cross the foyer easily enough, knowing the shape and size of it from his trips through to the town hall, and even gathers himself enough to explain the strange room to Nile.

"It was intended as a viewing room for a private collection but turned into somewhat of a museum of curiosities when the old family upped sticks and left everything behind. Most of these display cases have not been touched since well before my time here. No one comes to look, but no one bothers to steal the artefacts either, so they stay put for now."

And then they are at the front door and through it and stepping down the stone stairs to street level. Booker feels the bump and slip of the cobbles underfoot before he can process how far he has come. He gulps, looking down at the shiny brown of the street and the dull brown of his shoes.

"Keep up, old man," Nile teases, tucking a hand into his elbow. It is gentle with sympathy and patience, and she doesn't pull, only waits there for him to move.

Booker somehow does. It is just another miracle of today.

"So this market, is it permanent?" Nile asks, distracting him with idle conversation.

"It is. Even the worst weather only drives it under heavier canvas. It is hardly ever busy though."

"Good news for us shoppers."

"Yes, good news. Did you say you wanted to eat as well? There used to be, a long time ago, a stall that sold these little deep fried balls of dough sweetened with honey chestnuts…"

True to Booker's word, the place is far from a hive of activity when they round the buildings up into the square. It is barely past morning but feels like a sleepy afternoon, sparse vendors wandering and checking their goods, people walking in little dribs and drabs between the stalls. Booker guides the slightly underwhelmed Nile around to the shops at the side, spotting the old cobblers. He points it out. "That is what you want, is it not?"

"Yes that will be- Andy?"

"What?" Booker asks, thoroughly confused.

"Nile- _you_." Andy says, stepping out of that same cobblers with a pair of boots clutched in her arms, expression thunderous. "No."

She spins on her heel as Booker's mind clouds with screams and laughter and - above all - longing to go to his oldest and once-dearest friend. Nile seems both surprised and not at the reaction; she must know something of their fractured relationship, but she's digging her heels in to defend… Him? _Why on earth would she-_

A few steps away Andy comes to a sudden stop. She growls, shoulders high and tense under her long brown overcoat. _It still fits, such a distinctive silhouette cut out of the crowd even now._ Booker braces but she just turns around and shoves the boots at Nile. Nile has to let go of Booker's arm quickly to grab hold of them, mercifully distracted from fighting his unworthy corner. He does not think he could have borne it. "These are for you," Andy grits out to Nile, casting Booker a fierce, wounded glare that he just returns with his usual soft sorrow and guilt, looking away quickly.

She bares her teeth with a hissed ' _ah!_ ' of anger and charges off again, long strides carrying her too quickly to be followed.

Booker wilts in the wake of her turbulent impact on his life once more.

  
  


* * *

It is only by some great feat of self-control that Nile manages to keep her temper. It isn’t useful in the situation they have found themselves in, and she is torn anyway - between defending the abject misery and guilt she sees on Booker and his almost twenty-year exile; and respecting the true, bone-deep grief she sees in every line of Andy's face and body.

Whatever else is involved in this messy relationship she knows Booker did something that had a horrible outcome, and that resulted in Quỳnh's death. Whether it was an accident or honest mistake seems secondary to both Andy and Booker at this point, but Nile is instead focusing on the fact that it has been _almost twenty years_. Is it not time for them both to let his punishment come to an end? It cannot be healthy - for either of them - to let this remain a shadow hanging over their lives. Andy lives like she wishes she did not and Booker is exactly the same. It certainly has not allowed Andy any peace or the ability to move on.

She groans softly under her breath at her own impulse to meddle. _Mama I'm sorry_ , she thinks westward towards home. _I think I'm going to have to get even more involved_.

Booker's head is still cast downwards and his hands hang limply at his sides. It does not seem as though he is seeing much of anything, until she shifts and his attention is drawn back, catching on the boots in her arms. His mouth parts and eyes narrow and then widen, crinkling into something soft and sad.

"Quỳnh's boots," he murmurs, nodding at them. "She must have kept them."

"Really?" Nile replies, surprised by that fact. She looks down at the boots, newly mended and relaced. They look like good sturdy shoes, with thick treads for the mud and strong leather sides, the brown marked and creased from being well used. Quỳnh's boots. If Nile was feeling poetic she might ruminate on the aptness of walking in the shoes of the dead woman she was trying to discover more about. But even more apt perhaps is Andy giving them to her - a silent message that Nile will have to try and decipher. "Well," she breaks the quiet, meeting Booker's gaze with squared shoulders. "I shall have to wear them proudly. But first, now that my search has ended, we can go straight to the tailor for your-"

He shakes his head to stop her. "No, no need. I will just go back."

"Booker. You said to wait for you. I can do that if that means you are actually taking steps forwards when you move, not retreating back."

"It was just… Andy seemed-"

"That is her prerogative. Yours is to find some new clothes and finally appease my nose." The tone works well to kick Booker back into gear, although he still looks more drawn than before. He leads her unsteadily, not to a tailor but a stall with what looks to be second hand clothing. The woman attending to the stall strikes some kind of deal with him in fast, foreign words, until Booker is nodding and unstraps the broken pocket watch from his vest. An armful of items are handed back over - three simple shirts and a new pair of trousers, along with some pleasantly thick socks and a warm pullover.

"That will do," Nile says with approval. She eyes the shirts and Booker's current faded-but-fine ensemble. An idea starts to form, that fits in ever so nicely with their remaining goal that she could almost skip in delight. She shifts, impatiently waiting for him to be done and make his goodbyes, casting her own into the mix towards the narrowed, suspicious face of the vendor.

Even Booker seems lighter when they step away with his new purchases. "Come along - I have plans for you, my good man, now that you are ready to be a less pungent member of society. Follow me."

Booker does, without hesitation, not even asking where they are heading off to. It doesn't take Nile too long to orientate herself - she remembers the road from the library to Andy's and up to the church, and the church to the Inn, so it is simply a matter of picturing the map in her head and aiming in the right direction. It helps that the town is so steeply angled, each layer almost on top of the previous like a particularly un-appetising cake. The vertical rows of houses are almost each a full storey taller than its neighbour, each horizontal street much the same, so it is not too difficult to see the right direction. And since her previous travels have mostly been in the dark, it's almost novel to be walking through Elvagyodask in daylight.

The reception is empty when Nile leads Booker into the boarding house. Once he realises where they have arrived he balks a bit and claims impropriety, but only until Nile pins him with a withering stare, raising an unimpressed eyebrow for good measure. “The gloves are off where silly convention gets in the way of just living your life,” she warns him. “I have access to a bathroom that you clearly do not, and I want to change her boots as soon as humanly possible.” Her ankles have been crying out for the better pair since Andy had shoved them at her and run away.

"Really I shouldn't-" Booker insists weakly, but he moves when Nile bullies him up the stairs with a few good prods. She allows him one last token protest while she unlocks her room before turning on him.

"Look. There is nothing untoward happening here, nor is there any reason to feel as though I am being unnecessarily kind to you. You smell, Booker. You need to wash, and eat, and maybe take care of that mop on your head while you sort the rest out. In fact I insist you accept, and I insist you stop with this nonsense about propriety at once. Do you hear me?"

"I think we all heard you," comes the voice of her new acquaintance Joe, pulling open the door opposite to peek out at them. "Sorry to eavesdrop, only the sound carries and it was hard to ignore you. Is everything alright?"

Nile's eyes light up at the sight of him. Booker jumps, shifting backwards uncomfortably but Nile whips her hand out to grip his sleeve so he won’t run off entirely. "Just the man I hoped to see. My friend Booker here is in dire need of some upkeep."

"Now, wait a moment-"

"I was wondering if you had anything spare you could offer for him to wear underneath? And perhaps a razor, or… Well, you can discuss it between yourselves while I draw him a bath," Nile finishes. Booker's mouth moves, eyes darting between the two of them, but Joe just crinkles into a broad grin and spreads an arm wide to invite Booker to speak. He gives Nile a nod and she leaves them to it, talking in the hall while she goes to grab a towel from the linen closet at the end and sort out the bath taps. 

They swap occupancy of the bathroom a few minutes later, Booker shuffling in with his arms even fuller than before, a soft _thank you_ on his lips before he shuts and locks the door behind him.

Joe is still in the doorway when Nile makes her way back, leaning casually out with his arms folded. There’s a pencil jammed behind his ear and smudges on his sleeves from whatever piece he had been working on. "Will you be making a habit of bringing men back? Should I prepare myself some wax earplugs?" he teases, laughing when she swats his arm. It’s very easy to be comfortable with Joe, she thinks. He is a breath of fresh air in a stagnant town. It reminds her of younger years; of time spent with her brother before they both parted for their different educations and careers. It is a bittersweet thought - they were both happy with their decisions to move away but it was a sad parting nonetheless - and Joe reads it on her. But he doesn't ask, simply changing the subject. "So, who exactly is your mangy friend?"

"That is the man I was telling you about. The librarian, though officially or simply by default of being the only one there; I cannot say for sure."

"The one who investigated the death of that woman?" Joe checks, humming and looking down the hall toward the sound of rattling pipes that abruptly cut off - the bath must be fully drawn - when she nods. "He seems rather… Down on his luck."

"You could say that. It isn’t my place to talk about his misfortune but I am grateful you could help somewhat."

"Oh, not at all! I have more than enough to share. In fact I think I have rather gone overboard with what I brought here. Taken up far more than my share of the drawers and wardrobe, that is for sure. My uh," he rubs his beard with a light blush and a shy smile, "my sweetheart has been kind enough not to chide me for it but I am sure he was rolling his eyes behind my back when I unpacked."

 _So it is a secret lover. But a true love kind, not a sordid, lustful affair_. It makes Nile a little sad. But Joe remains bright as ever. "I certainly will not miss a few extra underclothes. I certainly have the time now to do more frequent washes, even if I did."

"Ah yes, and thank you for your time. I do hope we didn't interrupt?"

Joe wrinkles his nose and shakes his head, and then glances at her again, differently. It’s almost knowing… Mysterious. Nile is not sure she likes the edge it has to it. "Would you like to come in and see?" he offers, voice a lowered, rich hum, eyes dancing.

Nile could not have denied him even if she had not been genuinely curious about his artwork already. As it is she just nods, captivated, and follows him into number four.

There is no desk in this room, and one would not really fit anyway with the size of it, smaller than her own. Instead Joe has clearly been working on the floor, papers scattered all over the wooden floorboards. The curtains are still closed, letting through the barest hint of light, and the bedsheets are messy and unmade. She feels her mother's training take over and wants to twitch it neat, push the curtains back to allow the day in, but holds back.

And just as well because Joe guides her through the papers to the bed, perching her on the corner of it closest to the door. "Look," he says softly, directing her gaze down with a nudge of fingers to her cheek.

She looks.

Scattered, she'd thought. But now she looks from this angle it is not a disorganised mess at all but a sprawling image - or images - that travel around from each far edge, looping in arcs side to side that gradually approach the empty pages just in front of her feet. Her heart races as she follows the symbols and shapes, not the sort of art Nile had expected for even a single moment, nor the sort of art she had expected from the way she had seen him draw the night before. Joe grips her shoulders, his own breathing fast as her head moves to take it all in, holding tighter and tighter. "Isn't it beautiful?"

The whisper breaks the spell and Nile wrenches out of his grasp to stand upright, looking down at the bizarre drawing - drawings - with a frown. Joe, when she turns to look at him, is smiling but his eyes are tight with the same fear she feels, his knuckles white. Without her shoulders to hold he digs his fingers into his palm, staring at her. Nile's mouth moves soundlessly, trying to find something to say, but all the speech has been sucked out of her. She clenches her teeth tightly and tries to move, away and out of the room.

Joe's hand on her wrist stops her. He begs her with his eyes not to go but how can she stay when whatever strange thing he has drawn feels as though it is a predator in the water and they're treading at the surface, expecting any moment to feel the clamp of jaws around their feet dragging them down, down, down to drown.

"Isn't it beautiful?" he whispers again, blinking slowly. Nile turns their hands and grasps his dirty fingers.

"Very beautiful. You've done… A really good job, Joe," she forces out. _Out! Get out, get_ him _out. Get out get out get out_. "Why don't we take a break, go for a quick stroll?"

"It isn’t finished yet."

"Just to keep your hand from cramping. Otherwise you'll have to stop,” she says on a whim, a hunch. He recoils just how she had expected, to her dismay.

" _No_."

"Exactly, so why don’t we just… Take that break, hm? You with me?"

The papers wrinkle under her uncaring heels when she pulls him along out of the room, closing the door shut behind them. It flicks a switch in Joe immediately, back to brightness. "Interrupt? No, not-" he begins to say, breaking off with a squint and a confused set to his mouth. "Sorry Nile, what were you saying? I cannot quite- I seem to have-"

Nile grabs him quickly when he looks over his shoulder at the closed door. "You were going to go and ask if someone could clean Booker's clothes for me. And then-" _Think Nile, think, find something to distract him_ "- and then I want to hear all about this sweetheart of yours. You must love him very much, to stay in a place like this just to be with him."

"Oh, I do," he responds instinctively, and then smiles. "Thank you, yes. I will be back in a minute then."

When his footsteps have reached the bottom of the stairs and begun to move away, Nile bursts into action. She might not understand the funny turn they had both just shared but she knows she does not want to give it the chance to happen again. She steps back into number four and gathers the papers together in a rough pile without looking at them, taking them out of the room and shutting the door behind her. In the corridor she feels her arms tremble as though carrying a much greater weight than the two dozen sheets of paper she sees, and in a fit of impulse the drawings shred under her hands, rending with glorious ripping sounds between her fingers until she's grasping nothing but a pile of thick, ruined pieces.

"Damn," Nile gasps, chucking it all in the bin in her own room and hiding the bin inside her cupboard, before Joe can come back and see the massacre of his work. And then she sits at the desk for a while and wonders why she did it.

  
  


* * *

Joe has completely forgotten the whole experience by the time he returns upstairs with the good news that Booker's clothes can be washed as soon as he is out of the bath. Nile relaxes in relief when he dips back inside his room and just returns with an armful of linens - "might as well make use of the laundry water while I can!" - without a single mention of the missing drawings. He joins Nile in her room quite happily to await Booker when she offers, using the desk chair instead of crowding together on the bed while Joe rambles on about his sweetheart.

"Nicky is… He is wonderful, Nile. I thought I was the only person alive in this whole town for so long, and then he showed up. It was only professional for the first visit, and then he turned those eyes on me and I _knew_."

"Very sweet. You're very romantic."

"Incurably," Joe chirps, laughing like he is remembering something, or perhaps quoting. "I am infested with it, truly. But Nicky is the same, only he speaks with his whole self rather than insignificant, inadequate words. It takes me a sonnet to say what he does in a touch or a smile."

Nile sighs. She is hardly immune to the draws of romance, and it is very lovely to hear about such a dreamy fairytale love, at least the way Joe tells it. "How long have you been seeing one another now?"

"Not long, I suppose, but it feels like a lifetime. Maybe a month? Five weeks? I can only remember how he looked that first day, not the date itself."

"Shame on you, Romeo. Whatever will you do about your anniversary?"

It feels good to laugh, glee ripping through her chest into the world, chasing away the lingering dread. That is the sight that greets Booker when he returns, freshly clean and wearing new clothes. His beard is trimmed down and his hair combed back with a little pomade that Joe must have loaned him. The sweater looks warm and cosy and so does Booker and Nile is abruptly so very relieved. It is a vague relief - after the terror and the anger it’s just nice to know that something is going well.

Booker shrugs his shoulder awkwardly while Joe whistles, and Nile reassures him with a soft smile. "It fits you nicely. How do you feel?"

"Honestly? Clean." His lips twitch when the two of them laugh again, his eyes crinkling. "Is there somewhere I can…?" he lifts his old clothes and Nile directs him back downstairs to the laundry room.

Once he is gone she turns to Joe. "We’ll take the rest of the day off I think. Would you like to accompany us? I was hoping to go for a walk, see some more of the town during the daylight."

Joe lights up, and then closes down, sighing. He runs a hand through his hair. "Nicky asked me to stay in, today. And I am- that is to say I should not really be wandering around. I came here for a reason, after all."

"Privacy?" Nile suggests. Joe nods with a grateful smile.

"Yes, privacy. Exactly. You are a very sharp young lady, you know that?"

"It's my superior American education," she shoots back quickly. "But don't worry, it is never too late to catch up. Perhaps we will see you at the church later then instead? If you go again?"

"Always. Have a lovely day now, Nile. Booker," he adds with a nod, spotting Booker stepping back through the door. "It has been a pleasure."

They bid their farewells and take their leave of the Jerusalem Inn, surfacing back out into the winter sun. Nile glances behind her and tries not to picture Joe sitting back down on that floor and recreating his hellish images, shaking it off forcefully. The weather is really starting to get to her, it seems, and no doubt Joe as well, with his artist's temperament. For all he said he was not really an artist, or eschewed the title when she offered it, it’s more than plain that at heart that is exactly what he is. Nile hopes he creates things more, _appealing_ , than his earlier example on occasion. Perhaps he draws his sweetheart Nicky. For Nicky's sake she crosses her fingers on that one.

For Joe's as well.

Booker seems to walk differently in his clean clothes, straighter than before, more upright. His shoulders are still rounded forwards but his head is up, not trained on the ground quite so strictly. Nile does not want to disturb his progress nor his improved mood, so she decides not to tell him about the strange visions she had had in Joe's room. She does wonder how much the confidence of Joe’s own delusion -the conviction of his voice and certainty - had fed into her superstition, that-

_Wait. Superstition._

"Nile? What is the matter? Are you well?" Booker asks when she stops dead in the street, rummaging around her pocket. There is no little lump hidden away, and Nile is sure - absolutely dead certain - that she had not taken her little protector out the night before. Which means…

"I lost- oh, it was a gift, only small but-" she groans, rubbing her face roughly until Booker's hands gently pull hers away.

He looks at her in sympathy and concern, letting go when she makes no move to return to her frustrated action. "Was it sentimental?"

"Not even. But I think," she laughs, "that it was making me feel a lot better. Strength of the mind, you know? Placebo of course, but still soothing. And it was a gift, which is always unpleasant to lose."

"Of course. Could we look for it?"

"I don't even remember when or where I lost it," Nile confesses, but then pauses. She tilts her head, lips parting and moving silently along with her thoughts. "Or perhaps I have a start, a clue…"

Booker nods and waits patiently.

"It was in my pocket when I walked to the church last ni- Booker! Not you too!" She huffs and resists the urge to stamp her foot, because he has flinched and started to frown in a way not unlike Andy had, getting all het up about her being polite to a priest of all people. "Why are you both so twitchy about this?!"

Silence reigns between them, the issue of the lost doll forgotten. The puzzle pieces are almost all within her grasp now but some still elude her, and it is making getting started on the rest nigh impossible. Nile is a dog with a bone - or a faerie with a bowl of spilled salt, if she chooses a more fanciful and perhaps more accurate analogy. She simply cannot stop until she _knows_.

Booker's leg twitches and his head twitches and Nile darts forwards to grip him by the arms before he can turn away. "Tell me. Just tell me _why_ it's such a secret, at least. Please."

"It is not- I am going to, but-" No, no, _no_ , Nile nearly shouts when he falters and stops, looking distantly over her shoulder. "Let's go find your lost thing. Then I think…" he gulps, a thick and loud swallow. "I think I do owe you your story."

 _Close your mouth, you'll catch flies._ The soft echo of her mother's amused warning is what it takes for Nile to realise she is acting a little embarrassingly. Booker is shifting uncomfortably but holding up under her excited stare. "Well that is, that is excellent Booker. Thank you in advance," Nile says, fighting hard to keep her voice even. _More pieces, more pieces..._

"Now, where did you see your gift last? And what is it exactly, if I might ask?"

"You certainly might if you have any hope of recognising the thing."

"Quite," he agrees mildly, but with that same lift of his face, that is to a smile what the lightening of the sky is to sunrise.

So she explains; about the men she had encountered and the jostling - Booker clicks his tongue sharply but says nothing - after which Nile can only assume the doll was forced from her person. 

“It will take some searching for in the mud,” Booker murmurs with a wince, sucking in air through his teeth. But it will be worth it, they both agree - Booker is especially emphatic on the value of comforts in this town. 

"There is already so much darkness lingering over us here; even a placebo would be of great value. And to see your distress eased would cure my own."

Nile squeezes his hand quickly for that with a warm smile, and they set off to get to searching.

  
  


* * *

The day is starting to darken into night by the time they give up. Booker sighs, twisting his hands together and Nile knows what he is trying to work up the courage to say. It has only been an hour really, she thinks, since they began to work their way methodically up the street, searching the ground. They had received a few strange looks from passers-by, and noticeably no looks at all from the few people who had walked past with their white collars and black shirts not quite covered by thick winter coats. Every time a priest had approached Booker had tensed, but nothing ever came of it.

"Alright, I give in," she says, bracing her hands on her back and arching to stretch it out with a groan. Looking back down the road she feels a pang of guilt at the thought of the cheerful little doll lost to the cold dirt and trample of hardy boots. _Poor thing_. "Thank you for indulging me, my friend. At least there is a good source of hot food nearby."

Booker inclines his head and rubs at his knees, stamping one foot and then the other to shake off the beginnings of the evening chill. "It was for a good cause. But food does sound appealing, I confess. I have not had much of an appetite, these last few…" his voice trails off and a frown takes over and Nile knows that he must be desperately trying to count the passage of time. A futile exercise for a laudanum addict. _Ex-laudanum addict?_

"Booker…" she starts slowly, wondering how best to ask. There has been no sign of it on the man since the day before but she is aware that small doses might have no visible effects, especially on- _is it crass to call him an expert?_ "Never mind." No need to push when such progress has already been made. Nile sends him a smile at his confused blink and then nods her chin up towards the church. "Let's go eat. We might even run into Joe again, he is remarkably good company."

_When he isn’t suffering from strange hallucinations and creating imagery that belongs in the vaults at Miskatonic more than a gallery, or on the floor of a kind artist's rented rooms…_

"Very well. I will thank him again for his generosity. He did not need to be so-" Booker struggles to find the word and shrugs. Nile thinks about the strange complexities of the town, with all its isolation and insular culture, yet hiding such gems as Joe, the rich man with a heart big enough for a crowd; his Nicky, who must be truly kind and sweet to have caught Joe's affections; and the priest with the saddest, shyest eyes of any church leader Nile has ever met. She wonders if they know each other, seeing as Joe is apparently visiting regularly.

Although so is a lot of the town, if the constant long queues are any indication. It strikes Nile, as they walk up to the church and see the figures crowded around, that this is a fairly significant number of inhabitants to be taking advantage of free meals. And they all seem equally dishevelled, equally hungry and equally quiet. Equally unwilling to look the priest in the eyes, too, even though he continues his soft blessings as he hands over each bowl personally. There is not yet any sign of Joe, but someone else unexpectedly appears as Nile and Booker stand out of the way with their bowls of soup - simple vegetables and some kind of grain in broth tonight, once again no fish to speak of - and take a break from talking. 

Andy.

She strides up, hands in her pockets, and bypasses the line entirely, drawing the priest away from his post with a few short, sharp words between them. He seems just as argumentative as she is, but he eventually follows with a harsh sigh, waving her into the church.

Nile is following before she thinks to look back and ask Booker if he would like to come. He appears to be working up to a protest, chewing the inside of his cheek, but it is never voiced. "You first," Booker murmurs instead, with a wry huff when Nile grins at him gratefully.

She is off like a shot, feet padding quietly in her comfortable new boots. She almost expects the door to the church to creak ominously when pushed open, but it just slides with a faint brushing sound, fabric nailed to the bottom of it on the inside, blocking a draft. Once Booker is inside behind her and they've closed the door again, Nile makes her way slowly forwards up the aisle between the pews. Andy and the priest's voices come from a room off the main one, and the door is open, allowing them to be audible.

She frowns when she realises they are not speaking English though. “Damn,” she breathes out. Booker touches her arm and she looks his way with a raised eyebrow, as he starts translating quickly under his breath, just loud enough for her to hear.

"- cannot tell you anything that I did not last time."

"Perhaps I have new questions." Andy's voice is clearer than the priest's, unyielding and firm. Nile stands carefully out of sight and listens to Booker’s hushed whispers.

"Perhaps you do," comes the grudging answer. "It is not the best of moments to be asking them, if I might say so."

"You might. I might happen to disagree."

There is a pause, both of them no doubt reacting - or not reacting - without words. And then the priest sighs again, papers rustling. "Very well. If you will not leave, then by all means ask your questions. And I will tell you, as before, that I have no information for you on either subject that will help."

"Still no sign of Yusuf then?"

"I could not tell you where he is."

"Any messages?"

"No, as I said-"

"Not written ones. An artist, is he not? You said he says things with sketches sometimes. Has there been anything like that, anything that could be construed as a message even if I am not asking exactly the right question?" Andy's voice has turned as sharp as a shining new iron nail by the end of the very pointed question. Nile senses a reprimand in it somewhere, and the silence that answers supports her theory. "That, Brother Nicolò, is a yes or no question."

"No," the priest, Brother Nicolò, grinds out. "He has not sent me any messages, written or drawn or otherwise."

Wait. _Nicolò._ And a _missing artist._

Nile steps back away from the door for a second, brain rattling around noisily. This feels like another of the town's puzzles, like the incident twenty years ago. Only this puzzle is a lot closer to completion - and Nile has some of the pieces, unaware that they were part of a picture at all.

"More and more of your holy friends are wandering around, encroaching on the al-Kaysanis, their beloved and only son missing... And you want to tell me that you genuinely have nothing to offer? You knew the man best of everyone it seems, surely you must know his haunts!"

"Yusuf never left the house, he was forbidden," Brother Nicolò answers, low and even. "And this nonsense about him being a danger?" He scoffs.

"I saw his rooms, Brother. The art there was not made by a man of good health and clear mind. You say you have not seen him, then how can you be sure he is as safe as you say?"

"I-"

"Is it that you already know? Or is it that you do not care, either way? Or perhaps you are part of something larger, and in fact Yusuf's deterioration serves your ends in some way-"

"How dare you-!"

Nile bursts into the room just as Brother Nicolò - Nicky, it must be Nicky surely - stands up from his desk and Andy braces her hands on her chair to do the same. They both turn to stare at her when she cries, "Joe! You're looking for Joe?!"

Then Andy starts to smile, wide and smug, and Nicky falls slowly back into his chair with a defeated, pained expression, dropping his head into a hand.

* * *

Andy cannot say what she expected when she had turned her feet towards the church this evening. Perhaps just to let off some frustrated steam by harassing the lying priest a little more, maybe even catch him off-guard and unawares and trip him into confessing… Well, anything at all really.

When he begins to falter today, this time round she does press, leaning into his gaps and inconsistencies, and then - Nile.

Nile goddamn Freeman. Wearing Quỳnh's fixed up boots. Bursting in like a novel heroine come to save the day - yelling about a man named Joe. Whom she believes Andy to be looking for. Who must be Yusuf, under a false name, and whom Brother Nicolò absolutely knows more about than he's letting on.

Victory tastes as warm as really good whiskey, when it burns in her chest.

"So," she begins, gleeful at Nicolò's clenched jaw. He lifts his head but not towards her, looking at Nile with big, sad eyes. _A good actor, that one._

"You know Joe?" he asks, ignoring Andy altogether. Nile nods, stepping into the tiny room. Through the door Andy can hear shuffling, and curses inwardly when she realises Nile must still have Booker with her, lingering in her shadow like a bad smell. And Andy knows bad smells; she lives on the edge of the docks, after all.

"We are residents in the same boarding house. Room seven. But we met here, last night." Nicolò looks up in alarm too late to stop her from sharing those useful facts. Andy is already jotting them down. 

"Right, well then. Thank you for your help, Nile. I will be-"

"Hang on!" Nile protests, staying firmly in the way of the door even when Andy stands up to leave. "What are you going to do to him?"

"She will haul him back to his parents to be hospitalised for an issue that has been entirely exaggerated," Nicolò says, sharp but without raising his voice, joining the other two on their feet. "Nile, is it? Please, you know this is not right."

Andy watches him and watches Nile, and sees something fascinating flit across the young woman's face. _Is it fear?_

"Did you see something?" she asks, clutching her pen tighter. In some ways she hopes to hear a negative; that Yusuf is just a man acting out and that she can complete this job without any further complications. In other ways she wants an affirmative; so that Brother Nicolò will understand at last that she is not his enemy - not in this matter at least -, and will not set the cursed Church on her for taking away his friend.

"Nicky," Nile starts slowly, and Nicolò's eyes soften at the nickname. It goes down in Andy’s book quickly. "I don't think it _is_ exaggerated. He is suffering from something, alright, and he had some kind of delusional episode today."

They all freeze in surprise at that little tidbit. Andy and Nicolò both sit back down in synchronisation, one intrigued and the other alarmed, while Nile shuffles her feet. Booker's head pokes in behind her, pinched with concern, but Andy is too focused on Nile's declaration to feel anything but a vague twist of _bad_ at his presence.

"Go on."

"I don't know what more to say. He was perfectly normal, as ever, but-"

"You two have met before?" Andy interrupts.

"Yes, in the corridor the other- that doesn't matter!" Nile protests. "I had no idea he was this Yusuf you were looking for, anyway, and it is not as though you told me what you were working on. But today he was right as rain until he offered to show me some art. And it was… It was all wrong. Mad scribblings, a little nauseating even. He seemed almost manic with it, kept insisting it was beautiful. I confess I destroyed it when he left me alone in there for a few minutes. He didn't even ask about it again, I think he forgot the whole incident entirely."

Nicolò curses under his breath in words Andy does not recognise. Some family colloquialism perhaps, or priest slang so as not to get them in trouble with their vengeful god. He twitches upright from his chair, tugging at his coat.

"Sit down, priest. You have been keeping secrets from me on an official investigation and I do not appreciate it."

"Joe is unwell, I must go to him-"

"Not yet. If he has been alone in that state all afternoon then a few minutes more will not make a difference either way."

She feels a pang of sympathy at the way Nile's face abruptly crumples with guilt, a perfect contrast to Nicolò's as his clears into righteous fury, the strongest emotion Andy has seen on him yet. "You hear this story and try to keep me from him? He was only stuck inside like that today because of _your_ investigation! Nothing like that has happened bef-" he cuts off. "Oh."

"What?" both Nile and Andy ask, sharing a quick glance between them. Nicky looks down at his desk and runs his fingers over the open pages of a Bible bound in dark green, shoulders hunching.

"He has nightmares. Awful things, terrible, that take hold of him in the night and will not let go. But _only_ nightmares; enough to scare his parents and invite this whole situation but truly, nothing harmful. Only, last night I- he was gasping for air so desperately I feared he would stop breathing altogether and die while I could do nothing to help him. He would not wake.”

"Last night?" Andy asks, the question blurting out on the heels of her surprise at the admission. "You two are very close."

"He is the love of my life," Nicky says simply. "I believe I am his also."

"And you still worked to keep him from receiving help, that he sorely needs?!"

"What he told me that woman proposed was _not_ help for his bad dreams. He wants more than to live out his days in the hospital, attempting drug after drug for an ailment that is not physical in nature. She wants to study him, did you know that? The doctor, she is a…" his nose wrinkles in disgust. "She calls herself a scientist. A pioneer. Joe is not a patient, to her."

Quiet only falls for a few seconds before being broken, the urgency of the matter still front of their minds. This time Andy speaks up, to Nile. "What impression did you get of him? Could he be dangerous to anyone other than himself?"

Nicolò immediately and vehemently protests, lapsing back into the local language to do so, but Nile… Hesitates. That same flash of expression passes over her face and she looks away from Nicky when he says her name softly, almost-flinching at her response.

"No. You are both wrong. I will prove it to you. Leave us be for one more night, please, and then in the morning we will come and find you. If you promise no surprises." He holds Andy's eyes steadily.

"It seems fair," Nile adds, but it is really Booker that makes Andy's mind up for her. She wants to get as far away from the man as humanly possible, as fast as humanly possible, and she has no doubts that if she goes to the boarding house now Nile will follow. Not just because of her lodging there but because the woman has a taste for mysteries to rival Andy's own, and she is clearly invested and involved in this one already. Logic dictates, therefore, that Booker will end up trailing along after them as well.

Andy has suffered his reappearance in her life for enough today.

She stands up, closes her notebook, and nods. "Tomorrow, bright and early, come to the- " _Ah._ "Well, the-"

Before Andy can suggest the shambles of a building where her old office still lies abandoned, unable to think of anywhere better even as much as she dislikes using it, Nile jumps in. "Would the library work?"

Blessedly for Andy's heart and soul, Nicolò shakes his head. "No, that would be too risky. Joe can be hidden in the streets but by the town hall? And near to the main church? He will be recognised by someone who has visited the house and family before I fear, and our appearance tomorrow is _not_ an agreement to be sent back."

"This church is out too, I suppose," Andy sighs, and in lieu of any other options, winces and grinds her teeth and forces out, "my house then. It is on the outskirts, away from any central buildings. Last door before you meet the road out of Elvagyodask, that does not belong to a warehouse. Nile knows, she can help you find it."

Booker blinks in Andy's periphery, and Andy feels a little vindictively possessive about it. _Yes,_ she wants to say. _She came to me too, and first. You are not the only one who lays claim to her time._ But Andy is, unfortunately, an adult. So she holds her tongue and just waits for the slow chorus of agreement so that she can leave at last.

She stalks past Booker without a second glance and is out of the church in the cold evening in only a few quick strides, leaving them all behind to go and get some fucking sleep.

As the church disappears into the darkness behind her, Andy realises she never specified that Booker was not invited. _Just her luck. What a fun morning it will no doubt be._

  
  


* * *

Nicolò spends the rest of the evening shift trying not to chew a hole in his lip. He still manages to give each of the sparse visitors his customary blessing, but gets distracted by his own thoughts once or twice and fumbles the words.

He had sent Nile and the other man, introduced to him as Booker, back off to their beds when they had tried to stay and wait to see if Joe would show up, promising he had his beloved well in hand. But now, some time has gone by since they reluctantly sloped off, and Joe has not yet appeared.

It just worries him.

How much has he missed? Or has Joe's - _affliction? Condition? Illness? Nicolò has no idea what the proper term would be and all the options make him want to curl up and whine miserably_ \- situation really worsened that much overnight? Oh, how he longs to be wrapped up in their bed in Joe's arms, murmuring sweet things and gilded promises. How he aches to go to Joe and just hold him, lay apologies at his feet for not being able to protect him from the things that haunt him from within.

The food they have to offer runs out sooner than usual this evening and several people at the back of the queue silently turn away without a meal, only adding to the bruising Nicolò feels must be almost visible on his heart, radiating out through his ribs. He tries to reassure himself that all will be well - he will return to Joe and pass the night peacefully with him, wake to kisses and stories, and they will go and clear everything up with the Detective. Nicky really, _really_ wants to believe that, but he is not an optimist and has not evaded the perpetual doom and gloom that saturates the local inhabitants of Elvagyodask like Joe has. In some ways the early finish is a blessing in itself - he can return to Joe all the sooner, and the weather has turned wet with the promise of continuing all night. He hopes it stays a drizzle rather than a storm, but once again he cannot quite bring himself to turn to optimism.

It only gets worse when he starts to feel he is being watched on the way back - perhaps only his imagination, but in the dark in such times it pays to be wary. It is a rare fool that would try to rob a priest but people are getting desperate and desperation leads to regrettable actions more times than it does not, so Nicolò turns to face behind just in case.

There is no one there, only the shadows of the buildings and what light is sputtering out of the remaining gaslights on the street.

No one and nothing stirs. The experience unsettles Nicolò greatly, refusing to be shaken off, accompanying him and dogging his hurried footsteps the rest of the way home.

Well - to the boarding house, but the Jerusalem Inn contains Joe, and Joe is his home, so it is more or less the same thing. Far better than the pokey room he had been living in in some distant family member’s house before he had run off with his first and only love. Where that place had been cold and cramped; Joe is warm and his arms fit and contain Nicky perfectly, the ideal place to crawl into at the end of the day. The windows of Joe's eyes show off views Nicky could never hope to see through any glass in Elvagyodask; the door to his heart is always open and never lets any cold air in to chill him. He is a furnace in the most literal sense; burning hot and radiating it out for Nicolò to bask in, but he is also a furnace in the way his passion is a constant crackling fire ready to roar high when stoked, always heating Nicky gently throughout the day. A constant source of comfort - a dependable place of refuge. Sanctuary in the storm of the world.

And what a storm it is. Nicolò squints up as the sky flashes briefly further down the valley, an unfortunate match to the metaphors in his thoughts. 

The boarding house is dark but for a single light left on in the reception when Nicolò reaches it. He slips inside quietly, light-footed through the corridor and up the stairs. He has a room key of his own but Joe will be inside and the door unlocked, so instead of using it he just turns the doorknob.

It pushes open, even though a very small part of him - afraid and shaking in his chest - had briefly imagined it refusing to budge, barring his way in to Joe. A silly fear, he tells himself sternly, and steps into the room.

  
  


* * *

Nicolò di Genova - _Nicky, my love, sweet one_ \- is a priest. He has never left Elvagyodask. He has never seen a bombsite - has no real idea beyond vague imaginings what one might look like. He suspects nonetheless it would be an apt description of the room that greets him. 

And while he might be a priest; he is also a man. A man whose hands tremble, crouching and reaching out to touch the myriad of scattered, scribbled-on sheets of sketchbook paper, littering literally _every single surface_. It is too dark to see what covers them and the overhead light just fizzes and flickers and dies when he thinks to straighten and flip the switch.

Light is not necessary to confirm what Nicky already knows, though - a dreadful certainty churning in his gut from the moment his shoes first brush the carpet of madness strewn over the floor;

_Joe is not here._

"Love of mine," Nicky whispers to himself, clutching the door frame for support. He closes his eyes and bows his head as though in prayer, priest and man in equal parts, and feels the same familiar weight in the words now on his lips. "Please be safe until I find you."

Then he spins on his heel, locks the door, and races out into the night to find his lost artist - hoping against hope that his heart will steer him true.

He does not dare imagine what might happen if it does not. 

* * *

_There is a light up ahead it blinks and winks and they must reach it but they cannot seem to get close but they must keep trying the light awaits it calls it calls it calls- they keep trying._

_Joe and Nicky, Yusuf and Nicolò, share a moment together_


	5. Deeper and deeper

_The light is close, it is in reach. It calls and draws them in, warm and solid and real, what is real? They only know cold cold cold and dark dark dark and wet wet wet but they are not there but they are there and soon they will be even more there, mouth forming around words, fingers stretching toes flexing lungs drawing breath, what is breath?_

_It has been so long since they knew._

_Get to the light._

* * *

Rain is a firm friend of Elvagyodask. It isn't perpetual, often driven off by the tall trees or frozen into icy cold instead, but it is rarely far away either. The lake usually carries its own grey overhead, and the crook of the mountains the town is situated in have a tendency to collect clouds, trapping them like the people of the town are trapped, unable to escape once they wander in. Even when it is not raining the town feels damp, the streets are treacherous, and when winter comes ice comes with it.

Andy knows rain. She knows every different type there is, from drizzle to downpour, and she knows she hates it. Over twenty years in this place and she never has lost her distaste for bad weather.

She had gone dancing in the rain just once, with Q-

 _Don't remember that,_ she tells herself, looking away from the sky and speeding up her footsteps as she hurries home from the church as quickly as possible, hoping to stay dry. She makes it in time for the heavens to open, which in itself is not ideal but not a huge concern, but then comes the faint rumble of approaching thunder.

The doors and windows of the house are never unlocked but Andy takes a moment to check them anyway, even squaring her shoulders to march into the sitting room and resolutely not look at anything but the window latches. It works until she stumbles on the edge of the rug - _had she just forgotten that was there? How?_ \- and catches herself on the arm of one of the sofas, staring down at the faded green tartan cover under her hand. 

_Soft hair, warm skin; dry lips to wet lips to smiles and-_

She gasps, jerking back upright, and is out of the room again so quickly she nearly crashes into the hallway wall opposite the door coming out. The door is slammed shut behind her and she retreats to her room, sinking down in the nest of blankets between the side of the bed and the wall that has been her preferred resting place ever since the first night she’d had to sleep in it alone.

Normally this is when she would drink herself into blessed, peaceful darkness - but with the job and early start to come, and her own unfortunately still working moral compass… Andy is just grateful that the storm provides so much noise that her thoughts are entirely drowned out. She drifts, listening but not listening to the louder and louder cracks and growls of thunder, the flashes of lightning lighting her room through the old curtains she has not quite closed. Her head pounds from the force of the sound and the memories all crowded inside, yelling, beating on her skull to get out-

No, wait. The sound is not a memory at all.

Nor is the shout of her name from downstairs.

"What the hell?!" she croaks when she flings the door open, to find Brother Nicolò on her doorstep, frantic and soaked to the bone. He does not make any move to come in, already halfway through some rapid explanation by the time she has figured out he's explaining at all. "Brother Nicolò, Nicolò! Start again. Why are you here?"

"I went home, Joe was not there. He wasn't there! He is out somewhere, I have no idea where and you were _right_ , Nile was _right_ , Andromache, because he _is not well!_ " He sags forwards. Andy yelps in alarm, bracing his shoulder with a firm hand, and he lifts his head to look at her. "I do not know where he would go, especially with the storm. Even without! I- we- I-" his breath catches and she knows the widening of his eyes and the heaving of his chest because she had been living it earlier in the sitting room just on the other side of the hallway wall. Andy might be a cynic and a grieving, guilt-ridden drunk most days, but she cannot begrudge Nicolò his panic nor his love.

She lifts the hand she has on his shoulder around to clasp the side of his neck and he shudders, eyes still locked on hers. "Has he ever said anything - in dreams, waking, about any place? Shown any signs in his art? Think Nicolò. Anything to do with a location at all?"

His eyes travel the hallway without seeing it. After a moment he just whimpers and collapses a little further with a shake of his head. "I never asked, we never talked about the dreams… He really was fine, I swear." Andy would defy anyone to try and stay skeptical while bearing the full brunt of those deadly, pleading eyes. She groans and pinches the bridge of her nose but damn it she _does_ believe him. Which leaves them with nothing to go on.

"We should wait out the storm, go and find him in the morning. We’ll get Nile to help; cover more ground. She knows his face, and so does-" Andy swallows. Nicolò looks faintly confused but mostly teary. She hurries on before he can gather himself enough to ask. "We will do that then. Go to the library first thing."

"But Joe could be-"

"Could be anywhere. Anywhere at all, Nicolò. Including back at the Inn by now. Wherever he went, when the rain started it is more than likely he found shelter. Maybe it even broke him out of his… Episode. Now, you can traipse back to your rooms if you want to chance it-"

"No," he begs, reaching up to grasp her wrist. "Please. If he is not there I could not bear it. I would rather sleep alone out on the street and keep the hope that he is, than be there in our room, by myself, knowing that he is not."

Andy breathes in deeply, slowly letting it out. "Then you will have to stay, I suppose," she says on the tail end of the sigh. "I have some spare clothes, you aren’t far off my size, I suppose. Come upstairs."

Nicolò follows her, and now all of a sudden _Andy_ is the one with a sad man trailing after her like a lost puppy. She feels a small rush of kinship with Nile, and ignores the twinge to it that tastes like understanding.

They move in silence, sharing instructions with brief glances and the odd touch, fleeting and surprisingly comfortable. Andy shows him the bedroom, grabs a blanket and lays it on the bed. He looks at her, she just ignores it, and he accepts the offer. She points the way to the bathroom and chucks a towel at him, along with a set of spare underthings, that will be comfortable to sleep in, she hopes. It is just as well she's in the habit of wearing trousers and shirts, and needs the correlating undergarments to wear. The thought of dressing Brother Nicolò in ladies' underwear, complete with bloomers, does provide a funny image and she even chuckles a little while he sorts himself out.

He blinks at her when he emerges, but she just shrugs a shoulder. For a priest he looks awfully soft in her borrowed clothes, clutching the towel like a lifeline, more like the ‘Nicky’ Nile had referred to him as. Young, too, much younger than she is, probably closer to Nile's age even. Where Nile reminds her of herself when she had first arrived in Elvagyodask as a newly minted Detective; Nicolò reminds her more of herself, in those final few weeks before the end. When things turned from normal to idyllic to hell on earth in such short order her head and heart are _still_ spinning. Caught up in the rush of new love and impending trouble all at once, trying to cling onto happiness where it can be found.

"Get some sleep," she says. They have been looking at each other too long in the quiet. The storm still rages but the flashes and crashes are getting slower to return, ever so slightly. Nicolò climbs into her big, empty bed, pulls the covers up under his chin, and lets out a little, hiccuping sob. He squeezes his eyes shut while Andy closes the door and turns off the lamp, retreating to her safe haven on the floor.

At least with the storm raging on they can both pretend she cannot hear him.

* * *

Once Nicky dismisses them - and with the rain preparing to come down and the evening still in full swing - Nile and Booker make their way back to the library. They choose their heading by silent agreement, feet passing the street the Jerusalem Inn is on without turning. 

The library is cold and dark as ever when they reach it, still bundled into their warm clothes. Nile murmurs about putting on the kettle and Booker takes his time to wander around and collect his thoughts after the unexpectedly eventful day. He hovers in the doorway of the newly reorganised study, eyeing the files there with trepidation until the pressure in his head pounds as hard and fast as his heart and he has to turn away.

There is another window open when he wanders that way, perhaps blown loose by the rising wind. Booker had been quite sure he had locked them all firmly during his clean but they had also got somewhat distracted at the end when Nile had joined him, so it is easy enough to believe his absent-mindedness had left one unlocked. In any case he goes to close it again. 

And then out of the window he sees it - someone is moving through the dark, down the incline the library sits at the top of towards the street below. The rain is really getting going but the figure just walks unsteadily as he watches. 

“Nile?” Booker calls, repeating himself louder until he hears her footsteps hurrying his way. He points when she reaches him and they peer out into the dark together. The figure stumbles at the bottom of the bank, slipping in a muddy puddle, and when he straightens his face is visible in the light from a single, weak streetlamp. 

Joe pulls himself upright, still not moving quite right, and - after a long look up at the streetlamp - turns to head towards the lake. No, not the lake exactly; parallel to it - he turns southwest in the direction of the docks and starts to follow the curve of the street along the side of the library. 

“We have to help him!” Nile insists, and Booker needs no further urging to run after her. She gets a few steps towards the main door before he realises they will be quicker going the other way, grabbing her arm and tugging her after him through the stacks to the far end where the emergency exit sits. Out of the door and down the bank they scramble, haring after Joe. It’s lucky he does not seem to be moving fast because they catch up quickly - just as he stops dead, sways, and crumples sideways onto the ground. “Joe!” Nile shouts, echoed by Booker. 

“We need to get him inside quickly. There is a storm coming,” Booker says, wishing he still had the muscle mass of his younger self, so he could heave Joe easily onto his shoulders and carry the poor man alone. He has to request Nile’s help instead. Not that he is in any way against her helping - it is only that both Nile and Joe have given him so much in the short time he has known them. It would be nice to be able to offer something back. 

Between him and Nile they haul Joe up the muddy incline, carefully lowering him to the floor as soon as they make it inside and get the door kicked closed behind them. Booker’s clothes are covered in mud from the journey and also from Joe, and Nile is not much better. 

“I’ll get blankets, towels, and tea. See if you can wake him,” she instructs Booker quickly, leaving him there with the unconscious artist. 

Only he is not unconscious anymore. His eyes are open just a crack, and his hand lifts to clutch Booker’s jumper weakly, clearing his throat. “Are we there yet?” he asks, looking past Booker, eyes fixed on the light on the wall behind. “Is that the lighthouse? Did I make it?” 

“What lighthouse? The old one? Why were you going there, Joe?” 

“Need to reach the light. Need-” Joe blinks, scrunching his face in confusion. With a blink his expression is abruptly clear of anything Booker might class as madness, the dazed haziness to him gone. He starts to sit up, but subsides with a wince. “Did I hit my head? Where am I?”

“You are in the library Joe. You fell, but you were down by the docks. What-”

“Booker,” Nile chides gently, returning with her arms full. “Later. Could you- well, now you’re awake Joe, let’s get you somewhere more comfortable. Book?”

 _Book_ . It is such a simple thing, a nickname of a nickname, but he had imposed Booker on himself as a punishment and now Nile is turning it into a… A term of _endearment_. It is unbelievable. It should be impossible. 

He wheezes and redirects his thoughts back to the task at hand, helping Joe up and half-carrying him, half-supporting his weak stumbling down to the staff room to get him set up on the chaise longue that Booker had tidied. The tea warms all three of them up equally, but also has the unfortunate side effect of making Joe very sleepy. He is given permission to clean up and lie down by Nile once his head has been checked, and promptly passes out under a blanket without another word, dead to the world. 

“Well. I suppose I will head back to the Inn, tell Nicky that-”

The largest crack of thunder so far hits them like a punch, rattling overhead. Booker shoots Nile a look and she caves with a single sigh, fetching a blanket of her own and curling into one of the armchairs. “I suppose it _would_ be good to keep an eye on Joe, anyway. Nicky will meet us at Andy’s in the morning hopefully, whatever happens. I hope he isn’t fretting too much…” 

_Where is she Booker, where did she go? Where is Quỳnh I need her to be safe-_

Booker winces at the memory, but with a glance at Joe it softens into a warmer melancholy; a sad fondness. “He will be fretting like nobody’s business,” he murmurs, thinking of the last time he had been basking in the presence of this sort of love. “But tomorrow we can reunite him with Joe and they will be right as-” lightning flashes again and Booker chuckles a little at the timing, cheeks twitching, Nile lifting her lips in a tired smile. “All will be well.”

"Alright then, if you really think so," she replies quietly.

An enormous wave of pure, warm affection washes through Booker. He looks at Nile, this fantastic young woman, unstoppable in her desire to do good. He sees the faint worry on her face for a man she barely knows and thinks to himself that he is unbelievably fortunate that she had felt that way about _him_. It really has only been days, and yet his entire life has been turned upside down. Booker wonders if Joe will feel the same way upon waking, after Nile fights heaven and hell to correct the course of the world and set everything to rights for them. His face aches and his heart aches and it adds up to the most wonderful sensation Booker has felt in his body in many long, desolate years.

"I do."

"Why, Book - you're smiling!" Nile exclaims, looking at him with a surprised smile of her own. He hesitantly touches his face to find that yes, he is. Only a small one but unmistakably present on his lips. He glances at her shyly and her brightening grin encourages his own until he breaks into a wry chuckle again, ducking his head down with a shake. "It is a good look on you."

"Thank you, Nile. It- it feels very good."

"I'm glad. Book?" she asks with a tiny frown. It sets his teeth on edge immediately and the smile drops away. At his expression she hurries to continue. "Oh, nothing bad, I'm sorry. I was just wondering if you think Joe will be alright? Once he's back with Nicky?"

"I think it will suit us both to focus on reuniting them first, and getting some sleep in the meantime. One thing at a time."

"Quite. One thing at a time," Nile agrees. She settles, getting more comfortable, and closes her eyes. "Goodnight then, Booker. Wake me if anything happens."

"Goodnight Nile."

The storm howls on outside as the library falls still and silent once again.

* * *

Rain drips from every surface as dawn struggles to rise the next morning. Only a drizzle remains, stubbornly clinging to the sky. Far from enough to deter the inhabitants of the town.

Booker is up when Nile gently prods his shoulder and hands him a steaming mug of tea. They leave Joe, still peacefully asleep, and wander out to the reception desk to talk quietly between themselves.

"Did you hear what Andy said, yesterday?" Nile murmurs, eyes scanning the bookshelves laid out in front of them. Booker hums back and nods, gazing down into the comforting brown of his tea. "She said he was dangerous."

"And you agreed."

"No I- well I suppose I did. I do. But to _himself_."

"He seemed so…"

"They always do," Nile whispers, clutching her drink closer. "We had visitors to the University sometimes, people who had awful turns or terrible experiences that had changed them entirely. People that the more _erratic_ among the researchers might call mystically sensitive. They were so normal, pleasant, until a switch just flipped. It was like that with Joe. He was as lovely as you saw, and then he just changed - he grabbed me, I thought he might even hurt me if I could not soothe him."

"He _grabbed you_?!" Booker hisses in horror, looking back inside the room towards the sleeping man and fighting to stop himself hauling Nile out of there, far away from danger. "Nile you never said!"

"It was hardly relevant! He did nothing more, in the end, and I still believe he is more dangerous to himself than anyone else. He was wandering around in the storm last night alone after all, no one was hurt then. And Nicky seemed so scared of what the doctor was going to do that I didn't… I wanted-" _to protect him_ , they fill in together in the lingering silence.

Booker sighs, unsurprised by the reply but disheartened by it all the same. To hear that his kind new acquaintance had nearly attacked Nile? Well Booker knows for damned sure who his priority is in this situation. Perhaps Joe is indeed not in control of his own actions and is suffering - that is all very well, but Booker will make certain to ensure Nile does not end up collateral damage in her crusade to help all the poor sad saps of Elvagyodask.

"He needs help. You said so yourself," he says eventually, sipping the hot tea. "Can that even be given, here?"

"In Elvagyodask, you mean?" Nile asks. When he nods she purses her lips thoughtfully. What is she imagining, what poor souls has she met before and what were their fates? Booker looks back into the room at Joe again, and has to admit to himself that as fiercely as he will protect Nile from the man, he _does_ also feel sorry for him. Their afflictions might be entirely different - Booker's is considerably more self-inflicted after all - but he knows down to his bones the terror and helplessness that comes with losing control of your own head.

 _With hurting the ones you love and regretting it for the rest of your days._ And even if Joe has no idea of the panic and hurt he has already caused he must no doubt have been fearing the possibility.

"If the hospital is only offering this one doctor's solution then I cannot quite say. He would be better off somewhere with a proper psychiatric ward really, but the tales I have heard of those are… Not entirely encouraging. Often people come out worse than they went in. More often than not they do not come out at all. Do you even have such a facility in town?"

"An asylum? No, nothing of the kind. The hospital would cater to those needs if they arose. And in a place like this I cannot say they arise often. Salt of the earth people, born and bred, for better or for worse. Joe is a bit of a special case, I think."

"How so?"

"Well his family-"

They find themselves interrupted by a loud knocking on the front door, followed by the sound of that same door being shoved unceremoniously open, and footsteps stamping through the foyer into the library. Nicolò bursts through first followed by Andy, who stops dead in the entrance, expression turning vacant. Booker tries his best not to flinch at both her arrival and that look on her face. Nicky distracts him anyway with a frantic rush of words, switching over to English when he sees Nile. The priest looks dishevelled, hair a mess and clothes in disarray, damp from the weather and wild-eyed.

"Joe is missing! He was gone from the Inn last night and the room was- was- we need to get outside and look!"

"Nicky, he's here," Nile says quickly, standing up and guiding a shaky, stunned Nicky around the desk to see Joe. Andy turns at her voice, accidentally making eye contact with Booker. They both look away at the same time, just as Nicky's voice breaks in relief around Joe's name, and move towards the room. Joe is just barely starting to blink awake to Nicky's gentle hand over his hair, the other hand pressed against his own mouth. Nile stands nearby, but when Joe squints towards Nicky with recognition she turns, hiding her soft smile, and goes to set the kettle to boil on again. Booker leans in the doorway and enjoys the small bit of good the day has started with, hopefully a sign of the rest to come. Andy is not far behind him; he can hear her shifting from foot to foot, uncomfortable beyond belief to be back in the library no doubt. _Even worse to be near with him_ , Booker guesses, and hopes that his new and improved appearance is not making the situation that much more unbearable.

He would be lying if he tried to claim that a portion of his poor state, and self-imposed exile and punishment, had not been for her. The only thing he could offer, in recompense for his grave mistake. _Perhaps his resurfacing from grief with Nile's helping hand is a slap in the face that Andy does not deserve?_

"Can you wash some more mugs, Book?" Nile asks, pulling him from his spiral downwards. He nods, the scalding torch of Andy's presence at his back easing off the further away he gets. He unashamedly hides in the kitchenette, washing a few old, chipped mugs slowly and methodically until they are as spotless as such old porcelain can possibly be. He wants to hide there for longer - and he knows Andy expects him to - but through the open doorway Joe is sitting up and Nicky is sitting beside him, and Booker can tell they are about to reach the portion of the morning where they try and get some answers, at last. He wants to know what the hell had been going on the night before just as much as the rest of them.

Why had Joe been so bizarrely out of his wits? How had he mistaken the library lamp for a lighthouse that has not been lit and working for almost as long as Booker's been in the town? _How had he come so close to hurting Nile over a few strange scribbles?_

Booker places the new mugs down one by one on the rickety coffee table in the centre of the room. Nicky does not look away from Joe even once, hands curled into the artist's clothes at his waist and knee. Joe however, reaches out and picks his mug up once Nile has poured the steeped tea in from the teapot, breathing in the steam with a soft, pleased hum. His eyes dart around warily over the rim when he tries a sip, showing nothing but concern and confusion. The guilelessness of the emotions there ease a previously held tension in Booker's chest. As Nile had said - he just looks like Joe. Like he does not remember anything.

"My heart, where were you last night?" Nicky starts quietly, emotion barely restrained in his voice. Booker hates that he recognises that tone. He hates that he glances at Andy when Nicky talks and sees the stone-faced nothing on her face that speaks volumes to him; the only person left alive who knows her well enough to read it. She lingers in the staff room doorway still, hands firmly in the pockets of her coat, and listens in silence.

"I was… I suppose I went for a walk," Joe replies, turning to him. They all watch Nicky's eyebrows twist up fretfully. "Is that not what happened?"

"They- I do not know. Nile?"

"We found you outside the library last night in the rain, Joe," Nile steps in obligingly. "You were walking somewhere. Passed out before we got to you. Do you remember anything?"

"I… No. Nothing, after you left. Gosh that is- that is quite some time, is it not," he says with a weak, nervous smile. Nicky's quiet sound of worry takes away the smile and leaves only the nerves, compounding between the two of them until Joe has to put his tea down to clutch Nicky tightly. "Is it bad, my love?" he whispers, low and private. Still loud enough for the rest of them to hear, in the quiet room.

Nicolò winces and brings their foreheads together, shaking his head silently. Once again it is Nile who picks up the pieces of the conversation.

"You seemed very strange yesterday Joe. Do you remember talking to me about your art? What you drew?"

"I, I don't. Sorry Nile, I really don't. Yesterday seems like a dream I cannot quite remember, but I feel perfectly fine now? Truly." Joe turns back to Nicky again. "Truly I do. Better than I have done in a long time."

Booker does not need to be a brilliant detective to know that no one believes him. Nicky looks away; Nile closes her mouth and swallows; and Andy just scoffs. Booker for his part would like to believe Joe, but how can one trust the feelings of a madman?

 _No, that is unkind,_ he scolds himself. _Joe is not mad, only unwell_. He clears his throat and covers up his thoughts with a question. "You were talking about a light, last night. Do you remember that at all?"

Joe shakes his head, expression crumpling. "I have painted a great many lights, but I am afraid I don't know what it was I was looking for. This - sleepwalking - is new to me. I have had dreams of late, the like of which I do not remember visiting me since I was very young, but never have I lost time during the day, nor have my actions been swayed by them. A light? Did I say anything else?"

"You thought you might have reached the lighthouse, when you saw the lights on the wall here."

"The lighthouse?" Andy and Nicky both repeat at the same time with identical frowns. "That makes no sense," Andy finishes, moving inside the room at last. Nile darts up and drags in a chair for her from the reception desk, just as Booker starts to stand to offer his own chair out. Unsurprisingly Andy just ignores him - with a twitch of her jaw that says she had noticed and done so deliberately - and thanks Nile, pulling her notebook out.

"Well I know it doesn't," Joe protests, an edge to his voice that sounds a little like festering hysteria. "Does any of this?! Years, no - my whole _life_ I have been looking for a way to make it all stop and one night in this library is all it takes for me to have a better rest than I can remember ever having had before? And then I wake up and find out that I have apparently forgotten half a day and a jaunt through town! It was just dreams, just _dreams._ When… Why did it change?"

Booker clasps his hands together and looks down at them so he can avoid the desperate grasp of Joe's eyes, floundering from one person to the next to find something to latch onto in the sea of fear he seems to be drowning in. He wonders for half a second if Joe would not benefit from a few drops of the laudanum Booker knows is still stashed around the place somewhere… But then shakes that off for the foolishness it is. Not even Booker could say with a straight face that numbing the problem is any real fix for the cause of it. _Or should that be; especially not Booker?_

"What are you writing? Who are you?" Joe asks frantically, looking at Andy's furious scribbling. She just hums, and when he goes to ask again Nicky catches his face in his hands and draws him back to murmur together, hopefully to explain all the things Joe still does not know. Who Andy is, for one; what Nile had told them had happened in the Inn, for another. Meanwhile Nile clears her throat and turns to Booker, giving them some semblance of privacy.

"What is so strange about the lighthouse? Is it… Not real?"

"Oh it is real alright," Booker assures her quietly. "Only it has not been lit in a long time. It broke, no one has ever fixed it. Joe would have been very young the last time it worked. So even if he was looking for the lighthouse-"

"Why would he be looking for a _working_ one," Andy finishes loudly, reclaiming the attention of the gathered group. Joe eyes her with a new wariness, gripping Nicky’s hand. "But back to the matter at hand, Mr. al-Kaysani."

"Just Joe, please."

Andy's unimpressed raised eyebrow raises old memories in Booker's mind's eye, and just like last night they do not hurt quite as much in this company, only ache with an old fondness. Unlike the many poor unfortunates to wither under that look back when Booker had seen it last, Joe draws himself up haughtily, straight back and proud tilt of his head the first signs he's shown of his true station. And of all things Booker was not expecting to see today; top among them would have been Andy backing down. But back down she does, acquiescing with a brief pursing of her lips and a tiny snort. "You said you painted lights before? And yet you have never gone wandering like this."

"That is true. What of it?"

"It certainly seems like a bad sign, an escalation in your… Behaviour."

"I will tell you now, Chief Andromache, that I will have no answers to the questions you want to ask. I never have done."

"What a perfectly matched pair you are then," Andy mutters, to Nicolò's scowl and Joe's huff of confusion. "Well then. Since we have located you and you are certainly not safe out and about; you and I are due a visit back to your parents."

* * *

"No!"

More than one voice rings out but it is the priest's that is loudest. Andy eyes him and remembers the depths of the panic she'd seen the night prior. Nicolò is pale, shaking his head. "No, you agreed! And it is not _safe_."

"I would not go even if it were," Joe adds. "I slept well here. Nicky, my Nicky, do you understand what that means? I slept well! No dreams! Even in your arms in our room they found me. But here? Why, I am almost loath to step outside the door at all!"

"Joe, your parents are worried for you," Andy tries but he cuts her off with a flick of his hand.

He scoffs. "Let them worry. They ran to that doctor without listening to me once, why should I want to ease their concern now? The library helps. Medications and experiments have not, not one single time. I will be staying."

Andy's groan goes unheard as Nile adds in her own thoughts. "Joe, I know you say you feel better, but you cannot truly believe it would be over just like that? You forgot _hours_ yesterday, and the drawings?"

"Oh, what does it matter? Another sign that this is the place I should be, have I drawn once while here?! No!" He does look genuinely delighted, but Andy has run out of patience. The man is, as she had feared, not safe for the streets. As reluctant as he is to go to the hospital it is the most logical choice. She stands up and he stares at her, big brown eyes alight with passion.

She swallows down the flash of memory of another such pair, seeing them on Joe's face for just a moment, blazing bright, and steels herself for a fight. "That is enough. You are unwell. You cannot stay here indefinitely. I understand you have your reservations about medical treatment for your condition but I have a job and that job is to get you home and to keep the town safe. Nothing that has happened recently has given me any reason to believe that sending you back would be working against such a goal. Now come along please, Mr. al-Kaysani, before we get too late in the day."

"Wait-"

"What now?" she snaps, glaring at Nicolò. He wrings his hands nervously, full of tells now that he is no longer trying to lie to her. Or perhaps still acting, giving her just enough to hide the rest with a bit of misdirection.

"Why not give him one more day? A chance to prove that it is over, gone away. Joe can stay here, safe and hidden and I hope, untormented," the couple share a faint smile between them, "and then you can decide tomorrow. It is too soon to know for certain either way, surely?"

"And what difference do you expect to see in a day?"

"No dreams, for one thing. No wandering or drawing. But especially no dreams, tonight. He can remain out of sight here while I work, and we can see how it goes. Please, Andromache. What difference does a day make?" Turning her words back on her. She could throttle him quite gladly, if only he wasn't so damn earnest. She remembers the grating, aching sound of his quiet sobs last night and she sees the same need she once knew intimately in the curl of his fingers on Joe's clothes when they inevitably return there. "One day."

"Fine! Fine. Don't you have a church to go and cower in somewhere?"

His pleading eyes turn flinty and Joe starts to loudly protest his sweetheart's case. But Nicolò stops him, standing up with a final squeeze to Joe's leg. "As a matter of fact I do. But while I am _cowering_ in there, what will you be doing, exactly?"

"I will be supervising your errant boy-friend to ensure he does not run away again."

"He is not my _boy-friend_ ," Joe growls, but again Nicolò cuts him off with a silent gesture.

"You might not trust me, but please do not think of Joe as anything less than a man of honour."

"So says the _priest_."

Nile must have enough of their antagonism then. She gets up and pulls Andy out of the way so that Nicolò can move past and out of the door, Joe hot on his heels. "Andy, they aren't bad people. Will you please quit it?"

"Quit it, she says," Andy scoffs. "As if you know the first thing about the Church here and why it is I cannot trust them. Him."

"No, you're right!" Nile replies, tone just as hard. "I _don't_ know. And as a matter of fact Booker is going to tell me, because I would _like_ to. Instead of just making cryptic comments and useless warnings that do not make any sense."

"Listen Nile-"

"No, you listen! Nicky and Joe are going through something, they do not deserve your… Whatever this is. And nor do I - I want to help, and I would have thought that a detective would want the same. Or are you just a glorified bounty hunter now? Have you exchanged your drink for bullying?"

"That is not fair."

"Isn't it?"

Andy does not wilt under Nile's glare, she doesn't. She just… Leans on the chair a little. It had been a restless night, that was all. "Stay with us if you want today, but give Joe a chance, would you? You will have to get used to each other's company if you're going to be alone together all day."

"Alone? What about you?" _and Booker_ , is the unspoken addition to that. Nile eyes her critically and Andy wishes this brilliant young woman was a little less astute.

"Well," Nile begins, voice wry. "I assumed it would be better to get out of your way. We had intended to be discussing your mysterious past all day for my research, a subject that you have not only shown an understandable aversion to so far; but that I cannot imagine you would want to hear _Booker's_ retelling of. Unless you would like to join us? Keep his story straight? Give your own interview?"

 _Remarkable_ . Andy knows she is being played like a fiddle and yet her strings are singing at the offer. _Join us, join us,_ Nile's voice echoes in one ear. _Speak me, breathe me to life again,_ Quỳnh's voice whispers in the other. Andy does not _want_ to spend a day reopening old wounds with the person who had put them there in the first place, but despite the phrasing Nile has a point; it would not be right to have only Booker’s side represented on paper. Andy knows things he does not and she does not want Nile's head twisted with his sob story variant of the truth.

_If he even remembers the truth, after all his efforts to erase it from his mind._

She does not have to say a word for Nile to know she is in agreement, spinning on her heel when the young woman grins widely. With a clench of her teeth Andy hurries to catch Nicolò before he leaves, finding him and Joe by the doorway between the foyer and the library proper.

"Will you return tonight?" she interrupts them, a little pleased by the matching frustrated reactions they give her when they step apart from their embrace. Nicolò inclines his head in the affirmative even as his nose and mouth twitch, and Joe bids him goodbye with a soft kiss to his cheek.

The artist turns and locks eyes with her once his priest has moved out of sight, and Andy tries, really tries, to see if there is anything in that gaze that she can pinpoint as being unsound. Any sign of the man that had painted the monstrosity in his bedroom. But Joe is either a better actor than any professional, afflicted with something more unusual than she could imagine, or genuinely telling the truth that he is perfectly alright. He lets her look, until the sound of voices and chink of mugs being gathered breaks the spell between them.

"Well then. So begins our day, Yusuf."

"Joe."

"You do know that assuming another name does not change who you are?"

"Names hold power. And if you truly believed what you say, you would not insist on ignoring my own preference."

She narrows her eyes at his smug face. "You are not as clever as you think you are, al-Kaysani, nor pretty enough to sway me like your priest," Andy tells him, but despite herself it is not as harsh as it could be. He keeps smiling, until she prods him back towards the staff room. "Go on, get in there. If we're to be here all day we shall have to discuss what to eat, I highly doubt there's much stored here."

"Whatever you say, Ma’am."

"Do _not_ call me that."

"Detective? Boss? Official pain in my-"

" _In_ , you bastard. And stop _smiling_."

* * *

_Joe seems to be having a whale of a time in the library_ , Nile thinks. Andy is off, ostensibly to purchase them some food but primarily to get some breathing space between her and the library, and Booker too no doubt. She had been reluctant to leave her charge behind but with Nile and Joe's equally fervent promises to remain put, had finally caved and left with just a few empty threats.

The artist had promptly taken himself off for a walk, exploring the library eagerly. From her seat back at the reception desk, Nile can hear him humming somewhere among the stacks, the occasional rustle of pages heralding his location and another book that has taken his interest. It is a pleasant background sound to have, mixing nicely with the clink of Booker cleaning their drinks away. She sits back, closing her eyes for a moment and pretending that she is back at Miskatonic, in the researcher's lounge, listening to normal daily life going on all around her. There is a little pang of homesickness, a little twinge of melancholy, and then it fades into the background as the excitement of her task returns. She is not _pleased_ to be caught up in such a painful ordeal for these strange yet compelling people, but she is thriving on the challenge of it - the thrill of attacking a problem head on and being part of the solution.

On the tail of that thought Nile takes a moment to reevaluate her circumstances. She had arrived without much of an idea what might end up taking place, ready to take on anything that came her way. Is her place in helping a man in need while trying to document a particularly intriguing occasion in history to take back to Miskatonic with her? She wants to say yes; to achieve both. Can she also add this new thing with Joe? Andy? Nicky? Nile scoffs softly to herself and tries to shake the scolding tone in her head that reminds her not to bite off more than she can chew. There are no overbearing supervisors here to rap her knuckles and keep her on the sidelines. There are no infuriating upper echelons to silently press her head down away from affairs that don't concern her.

_It feels really damn good to help._

"Nile? Do you really think we should be doing this today, with Andy?" Booker asks, the man himself appearing to join her, bringing the second chair back out to sit on. "It feels too quick."

"Too soon for you, or for her?"

"Both. Either. Well, mostly her. But I find myself…" He winces, rubbing between his eyebrows. When he speaks again his voice is even smaller, eyes fixed on the desk. "There are several bottles of- of- there are still bottles of the draught in there," he forces out, jerking a thumb back over his shoulder into the staff room. "I would not want to disappoint you but I fear..."

Nile sighs, catching his hands between her own. "Book. I would not be disappointed, not like you think. Only sad, but for you - not for me. Why don't you help me find them and I will help you get rid of them all? No more temptation."

"You would do that?"

"Honestly, I think _you_ would, even without my help. You brought them up without my input, I believe you would have taken action as well. But it is always easier with a friend, is it not?"

"… Yes, it is," he croaks, looking at her seriously. "Thank you, Nile. I would not ask, but-"

"But I want you to. If you need to. And maybe while we look you can tell me how it started?"

Booker shakes his head. "It is part of what you want to record today. I think you should hear that first, so you understand the whole thing before I explain the why of it. Anyway, do you mind if we, ah, get started? Before…"

 _Before Andy gets back_ , Nile infers. She nods and then, on impulse, leans in to give him a firm hug. _Is it their first?_ It might well be. Booker certainly reacts as though it is, going tense and then melting into her with a slow sag of tension being released, embrace not quite comfortable and definitely too loose, but still there.

They peel apart after a moment and Booker manages another one of his new, little smiles, ducking his head sheepishly to lead her in.

All told there are only three bottles of the stuff lying around. Full, that is. The empty bottles are far more numerous, although Booker quietly admits at the end that there would be more, only he had saved money by requesting refills rather than entirely new bottles most times. Nile does not particularly want to go into the details of his drug acquisition so she just lets him mutter it out and then helps him dispose of the empties and drains the full bottles with steady hands. There is a look of panic that crosses his face, followed by relief when it is all gone, and his white-knuckled grip on the sink eases when Nile turns the tap and washes the last traces away.

She will make a note to keep an eye on him, perhaps ply him with water over the coming days, but he already seems lighter and although she has no practical experience in such matters - Nile suspects that his desire to stop is half of the battle won already.

"What is this then?" Joe's voice interrupts them, drawing them out of the staff room kitchenette. Booker gets to him first, clearly eager for the distraction, and makes a sound of quiet delight when he sees that Joe is asking about the foyer and the exhibit cases within. Nile follows after them, equally as curious as Joe but also silently willing the two men on in their growing friendship.

"Ah, you see - before your family arrived there was another that ran the company here, Mr. al-Kaysani," Booker explains, patting Joe's shoulder in a move that was almost too hesitant to be casual but still made Joe chuckle quietly. "They were considerably involved with the town, having founded it, perhaps too much so. There was a Merrick in the Mayor's office; a Merrick on the hospital board; a Merrick on the ships… You get the picture I am sure. They were all very similar, if I read my history correctly - greedy bastards, and not just for the lake's fish. Right from the very first Merrick to start the town they were always grabbing treasures and precious things where they could. Most of this collection was theirs, but the final Merrick before your parents bought the company, William I believe? Perhaps a Henry. Whatever his name, he brought this all here, left it to be archived and displayed, and then died shortly after the contracts were signed. A sorry death, some kind of starvation illness I believe - one day he simply wasted away in the… Ah… Your house, I am afraid. Man wouldn't touch a bite. Funny really, his wife was the last person I read of that actually made it out of here."

"How extraordinary," Nile says, unable to help herself. The men raise their eyebrows at her reaction, but Joe moves away to start examining artefacts without a word and Booker just shrugs self-consciously. "It all seems very… Strange. One might even call it fantastical."

"Fantastical?" Booker repeats.

"Yes, like a story. A family, raised up and then brought low, down to the last man. Only one escapee. But of course, such fancies are hardly found in the real world."

Booker barks a laugh of surprise. "But you work at Miskatonic University!" he protests. "How can you say such things are not real?"

"Well, because they are not? Not a single such claim has ever been substantiated. I myself have seen more than enough poor victims to these sorts of beliefs, and there is always another explanation hidden behind - mental imbalance, or a terrible experience that has strained the mind. Fairytales are often simply the most effective way to discuss and reflect on our own misfortunes. Like the old myths, of how storms came to be or what the source of hope is. There never was a Pandora and a box - of that we can be sure - but it gives meaning to those who need it most."

"And you think the history of Elvagyodask is just that? An old myth?"

Nile blinks, surprised by the passion coming out of the man. "The history, no. But the implications? It sounds as though you mean to imply there was some sort of curse, keeping people from leaving. But that would be ridiculous."

She half expects him to keep arguing, but he wilts and nods, running a hand through his hair, fading down back into the Booker she has become familiar with. "I suppose that is reasonable. It is all too easy to turn to such stories when living in a place like this."

"I understand. But it always pays to remain clear on the facts of the situation. I confess however, I am a researcher and an academic. Folly does not come easily to me."

"Of that I am sure," Joe calls over, drumming his fingers on the top of a glass cabinet. "You are an uncommonly smart American, Nile." He grins, revealing the tease for what it is, and the atmosphere clears with her laughing objections.

Booker remains fairly quiet, contemplative, while Nile and Joe look around. Nile finds the documents, written in spidery ink that is almost illegible, to be just as fascinating as the various objects. There are several parts of an old ship - the centre of the wheel, a spyglass, some rivets from the hold - and a few more esoteric items - a spyglass and chalice for example, adorned with an odd symbol of a cross covered by three strange waving lines. The collection feels random, and yet wholly not. Why Mr. William-or-Henry Merrick chose to dedicate these possessions here at the end of his life, she does not know but despite the oddly patternless nature of them the choices all feel deliberate.

The strange swoop of the feeling has her glancing at Joe, wondering if this is another of their shared emotive moments, but he seems as calm as he has been since waking, nothing but idle curiosity in his expression.

Andy finds them there soon after, gracing Joe and Nile with glances, a grunt and a nod, and passing over Booker without lingering. She does at least have enough food for all of them - including Nicolo, Nile notices - to eat for a late breakfast, lunch and dinner. Perhaps even to continue in the morning.

She blinks at Nile's bright smile, shrugging a shoulder and carrying the packages through to the kitchenette without hesitating. It strikes Nile to wonder how familiar Andy is with the library, how many hours or days she had once spent in it as Nile is currently. Was Quỳnh here as well, or was that limited to, as Nile suspects, Andy's house? The photos Booker had kept hidden had not been taken often in the library from what Nile had been able to tell, but out and about, carefully posed at special places but equally in mundane moments of companionship.

_The photos._

They still sit in the study room, in a neat pile on the desk. Andy will have to see them if they go in together, but as much as Nile is instinctively drawn to hide them she cannot help but feel that such exposure is both necessary and of great benefit to the still-grieving woman. And kinder to Quỳnh than having her remain so buried in her forgetting that she is more dead than any cemetery-dwelling family member. Poor thing. Nile herself clings to the memory of the single portrait of her father that had always sat in their small living room growing up. Without it, and the stories her mother had frequently told, Nile is not sure she would remember the man who was missing from their dinner table each night, and she is sure the world would be worse off for it.

"What are you thinking about so deeply?" Joe asks, nudging her with an elbow. She nudges him back.

"Breakfast. I am _starving_. Aren't you?"

"Now you mention it…" He winks at her, and then darts in front to block her access to the food. She immediately follows, trying to duck under his arms and around, jostling him joyously in pursuit of something to eat.

Even the lights in the room feel brighter while they laugh.

* * *

"Now seems as good a time as any to get started," Nile suggests when they have eaten their fill of the haul Andy brings back. Fried dough and the thickest jam Nile has ever seen in her life, with tinned pilchards and bread put aside for later. It is not the most exciting meal but it feels hearty enough to match the weather outside and the sheer amount of walking she is doing these days. Her stomach feels full but there is none of the faint nausea that big meals can often bring, aided considerably by the significantly lowered tension among the inhabitants of the room.

That tension rises again after her announcement, unfortunately. Joe alone seems to stay relaxed - Booker and Andy go so stiff they could be laid across a river and walked over without issue.

"I suppose," Booker says quietly, and apparently his hesitance is enough to goad Andy into determination. She squares her shoulders and raises her chin and nods at Nile.

"Where are we doing this? How had you planned to do it?"

Nile looks at Booker and then stands, leading the three of them out of the staff room and into the study like a mother hen with her chicks, waving a hand at the place. Joe takes one glance at the desk and its single chair and clicks his tongue.

"You will be better off in the other room. Unless you want me to leave you to it, I can go get the chairs-"

"Only if you don't want to listen," Nile replies, but she knows by the look on Joe's expressive face that he really very much does. "Alright, Book, do you have any paper and pens that I can take notes on? A typewriter perhaps?"

"There was one in the old… I'll go get it," he mumbles back, fleeing the room and Andy's icy stare.

"You don't have to be like this, Andy," Nile reminds her. She wants to direct Andy's attention over to the desk and the photos but as much as she has pushed over the past few days; she knows when not to. Still, she grabs the pile and puts them in her pocket before they troop back into the staff room to get comfortable again. Booker helps her to set up the typewriter, delaying them only slightly by replacing the ribbon. He hesitates when he sees Andy by Joe's side on the chaise longue, but retreats to his arm chair. "Whenever you are ready, from the start. You were called to Elvagyodask by Andy to help with a case…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This is a reminder to have a break if you haven't already! Food, water, a nice stretch, or even some sleep - now is the time_ :)


	6. Back to the beginning

Years later Andy will say it starts when she meets Quỳnh, months after she arrives in Elvagyodask. What she means is that, while the new chapter of her life could be said to begin when her feet carry her into the town for the first time, nothing truly matters before a young woman with dark eyes and a quick smile walks into her office. 

(In truth the history and mystery and misery actually starts far earlier, with a different arrival that Andy will not learn of for a while longer.)

It is just under a year after Andy's arrival that she meets Quỳnh. When she first reaches town, she walks the road that Nile will later walk, with her shoulders just as squared and her certainty just as firm, past forgotten behind her. It is a small place to move to perhaps, after the metropoly of the larger European cities Andy has bounced around, but the only place that had use for a detective that did not have any competition. Perhaps that should have been a sign, but it feels more like a _calling_ , a piece of fate giving her a stepping stone towards success. She settles in place - her house more or less a home, her office well looked after. She learns as many names and faces as she can - although that amounts to disappointingly few, thanks to the insular nature of the locals - and she sets about proving herself. There is not much to do- dishearteningly few calls for her assistance. 

_That's not to worry_ , Andy tells herself in those days. _They probably just need time to lose the habit of sorting everything out themselves._

Which makes Quỳnh, in the end, swanning in with her hair wild and her voice insistent and full of passion, more or less the first person who has actually asked for Andy’s help in months. She is ecstatic, and then reminds herself to be professional. It would not do to show anything less than her most serious side to someone asking to employ her, surely. Quỳnh is beautiful, and wonderful, and charming... But Andy has a reputation to build. It is the hardest decision of her life to keep things as unromantic as possible between them both. It does not last long.

In the end she caves - _of course she caves_ \- right before Booker arrives, leaning in to kiss Quỳnh on the doorstep of her house, at the end of the brief hours of winter daylight.

"I thought you would never-" Quỳnh says, blinking at her in wonder, her long hair loose from its ribbons as always. "I did not think you returned my affections."

"How could I not?" Andy wonders quietly, brushing some stray strands away from Quỳnh's beautiful eyes. "You are a spark of joy in a grey world, Quỳnh. And, I confess," the nerves churn in her stomach, "that I am somewhat loath to lose this privacy between us when Sébastien arrives tomorrow. I would very much like not to share you."

Quỳnh smiles so widely it must hurt, her whole face crinkled in joy. Andy no longer needs to imagine how it must taste, and it occurs to her that she can simply kiss Quỳnh again in this moment, instead of watching and wishing. 

They eventually go inside together, lips slightly numb and terminally turned up in smiles, and Andy insists on trying to cook, abashed and somewhat pleased when Quỳnh shoves her bodily out of the way to salvage a pot of boiling vegetables from her untrained hand. From dinner they move to Andy’s cosy living room for the first of many evenings together, where Quỳnh declares her favourite spot to be tucked up in Andy's arms, stretched out along the larger, green sofa perpendicular to the fireplace while Andy just smiles down at her. “It feels like I have been dreaming of you for a thousand years, and now find you made real, as familiar to me as my own shadow,” Andy tells her, not a natural wordsmith but overcome by the sentiment before she quiets again. Quỳnh grins and presses a hand to her cheek and then talks and talks enough for both of them, filling the room with life and coaxing laugh after laugh from Andy's chest. They kiss goodbye there at the end of the night, when Quỳnh has to return home. When they have to reluctantly part Andy follows and lingers for far too long in the doorway, after Quỳnh’s figure has disappeared around the corner, already eagerly awaiting her return.

In the end, Booker's arrival does not herald the type of change Andy fears. In fact they all slot smoothly into place together, shifting neatly from pair to _team_. It is Quỳnh who first names Sébastien ‘Booker’, after struggling to pronounce his surname in the same curling way he does - gleefully making a game out of suggesting alternatives. She vacillates between a few options before ‘Booker’ settles in place and when Andy finds herself using it one day they never look back. There is always a pleased smile on his face, despite his - token - protests.

"Then I will call you… Trouble!" he proclaims one evening, red-faced from the strong regional cider and the warm fire, slouched down deep into the other sofa opposite theirs in the room. "You see, ma puce, I can play these games too."

"What did you call me?" Quỳnh demands, sitting up and scowling between the two of them when they collapse into fits. "What does it mean, 'mappus'?"

They never do tell her.

* * *

What a time that had been. Andy wonders idly - as Booker's voice continues with his own version of events - where the photos of those wonderful days might be now. They had not ended up at her house with the rest, although there was a possibility they were hidden away somewhere, like the boots Andy had forgotten about until Nile's dilemma reared its head. The boots she looks at now and sees, strong and shining as they ever were, adorning a very different young woman's feet.

The present rushes back in as she blinks, replacing the hazy outline of the past in front of her eyes. "We only suspected that the Church was involved further down the line," Booker is saying. Andy rolls her eyes with a scoff that turns every head her way.

"Something to add, Andy?" Nile prompts, generously casual in her tone.

"Quỳnh knew from the start. She didn't say because she thought we might be the sort of people to put faith in an institution like that. She told us later when she was sure. You don't remember?"

And just like that, she is talking to Booker. She has said his name, out loud. Spoken to him, out loud. Mentioned Quỳnh and brought up the past. _Out loud._ Like a river undammed something works loose in her chest and she curls her shoulders over a little, meeting his equally shocked, wide eyes with her own.

"Andy?" he whispers.

"Don't you remember?"

"I remember too much and not enough," he replies, and she understands - _oh, how she understands_. "Do you want to try instead?"

She hesitates, looking to Nile for direction. Nile nods slowly, winding the sheet of paper out of the typewriter and adding a fresh one. Ready for her words. Her telling of the story. A warmth on her wrist startles her, but it is only Joe, reaching over with warm eyes and a serious expression and offering her comfort, freely given. After what she had threatened to do to him! He nods as well.

Andy inhales deeply. Nile's fingers poise, ready, over the keys. Booker clasps his hands together and nods at her minutely and Joe squeezes gently.

"It started before then. When I first arrived almost a year earlier."

* * *

The case that brings Quỳnh to her that first, fateful day is unexpected. It is inconceivable, and terrible, a grand iceberg of horror heading their way, and while they sit in Andy’s living room and laugh and Quỳnh demands answers with a pout, it looms over them, an impending shadow that they cannot yet see, let alone understand the true shape of. Elvagyodask knows it though, and the weather turns as stormy and dark and dismal as it can in the weeks that follow. Andy suspects the Church; Booker suspects some form of psychological phenomenon; Quỳnh suspects the Merricks, despite their absence from town. Paranoia sets in alongside the weariness of drawn-out work with little progress to show for it. And then in the space of a few days Andy and Booker discover three things.

Firstly; they are out of their depth as both outsiders and inexperienced investigators.

Secondly; no amount of research nor determination can stand up to forces far greater than humankind, when those forces sweep an entire community up in their grasp and refuse to let go.

And thirdly; nothing can adequately prepare a person for the loss of a loved one, whether expected or otherwise. It hits like a punch and leaves them both with the sensation of constantly falling to a ground that never seems to rise to meet them.

Quỳnh vanishes the same day that Booker argues with Andy to keep her in the library. He dismisses her concerns repeatedly, promising that Quỳnh’s absence in the morning is less important than trying to show her a source he _knows_ he found, about a rumoured historical event that matches the signs they have been seeing recently. It is supposedly a written record for the first time corroborating Booker's suspicions and Quỳnh's stories of strange traditions involving the Merricks and, somehow, the lake. “She will be alright,” he snaps, as worn down as she is, and fraying at the seams.

The words will echo in the empty space between them forever. Quỳnh is not alright. She does not reappear. While Booker promises there is something to see and never comes up with the evidence, his eyes bright with the fervour of his obsession with Elvagyodask's history; Quỳnh is taken. Andy never sees her again, not in the flesh - only in flashes of memory and grief-stricken madness from that point on despite all Andy’s efforts to find her. They never even retrieve a body.

And the worst part is Andy can never prove who or what had taken her. Her first case in Elvagyodask, ever unsolved. 

* * *

"You still don't know?" Nile murmurs in the wake of Andy's soft and choppy storytelling. Andy shrugs, then rethinks it and shakes her head, hands clasped in her lap for her eyes to focus on. "All that, and no answers…" The young woman whistles quietly.

The rest of the room remains quiet and Andy chances a glance up. She cannot look at Booker yet, but thinks Joe is a safe bet - until she sees the tears brimming in his soulful eyes and feels her own sting at the silent evidence that _yes, this is allowed_. She looks away quickly, sniffing and swiping a hand over her face to discourage such things, but Joe derails that plan swiftly simply by taking her other hand and squeezing it gently. Andy cannot look at him again - pressing her knuckles to her mouth and gazing sightlessly off at the door - but she squeezes back tightly, holding onto him.

Booker is deathly silent and still as a corpse in his chair, barely even breathing loudly enough for her to pinpoint him in her periphery. _Good_ , she thinks vindictively, and then; _Quỳnh would have hugged him_. It hurts as much as any thought about Quỳnh hurts - although without the numbing effects of alcohol it is a sharp pinch of pain rather than a dull ache - but Andy withstands it. Joe's hand is warm and his grip sure, and Nile is sighing heavily, a grounding sound in the quiet of the room.

"Thank you for telling us, Andy," she says, fingers stilling on the typewriter, out of words for the moment. "I am sorry to ask, but for my own notes - is there nothing at all you can recall about the final day, or the day after? The Church was active, you said, but what does that mean?"

"It means those damned priests were running around all the time. They were moving from one end of the town to the other in a hurry, flustered like you would never believe," Booker interjects in a rough voice, croaky as though he had been the one talking, not Andy. Andy wants to glare at him for speaking where he is not welcome but she is not sure she could have replied anyway, and he is not saying anything but the truth, for now. "At first I wondered if they were afraid of the people, of an uprising of pagan origins - or that they were perhaps seeing the strange activity of the town as some devilish curse - but there were never any attempts to affect the local behaviour that we could see. Services continued as normal. And then it all just stopped, the day after Quỳnh vanished. And I mean _all_. The whole town was quiet to the point of concern."

"I walked all through the place and only saw two other people the entire day," Andy adds in her own raw voice. "And neither of them was _her_."

They go quiet again while Nile types. The sound of the keys clacking fiercely should have been disturbing, gunshot loud, but it provides instead a sort of pleasant white noise to drown out anything but their own thoughts. Booker stands and goes to make more tea after a while of sitting with his leg bouncing, chewing on his lip. Andy knows because she watches him, torn from her solitude in misery by their slow stirrings of conversation. Is he mixing his tinctures into his drink in there? Is he going to come back different, changed, numbed? Will she be disgusted or sympathetic... Or jealous?

Joe shifts his thumb over her wrist absently and draws her attention. When Andy glances at him, the artist and company heir is looking right at her, searching her face. He does not say a word and nor does she, but she gets the strangest sense that he is seeing something as he stares, more than she is giving away. He still seems clear of madness and strange turns, but even that is not enough to convince the hairs on the back of her neck not to stand up on end.

"Alright. We should…" Nile starts, drumming her fingers on the keys, not hard enough to press them but just to make them tap. "We should-"

"We should take a break," Joe interjects. "Go for a walk, talk about something else, eat some more of that dreadful paté. Even I could use a moment away from it all."

Nile nods slowly while Andy thinks to herself how much she might have incorrectly judged Joe. As Yusuf al-Kaysani, the missing and rebellious heir, she had thought him proud and arrogant and irritating, a distraction from her usual daily routine of feeling sorry for herself, drinking, and feeling nothing at all. But as Joe, the man she is coming to know a little better, more personally? He seems kind, and clever, and afraid but brave despite that. First Nicolò and now Joe - _how many more people has she misjudged in her drunken callousness?_

Her thoughts definitely _do not_ stray to Booker on the heels of that train of thought. They really don't. But they do glance that way, sensing the rusting of the lock she has kept on that particular mental gate for a very long time. 

He makes eye contact with her when he steps back into the room with his mug, and pauses. Looks at her with a carefully blank expression to see what she will do. She thinks she is waiting to discover the same.

A few too many moments pass and Booker turns with a soft sigh, making to go back to his seat. It triggers something in Andy - his pathetically, pitifully respectful subservience to her anger and her grief - and abruptly she feels not pettily pleased, but madly furious. How dare he punish himself with guilt for her feelings? How dare he malign Quỳnh's memory by treating himself so badly?

How dare _she?_

"Booker," Andy says, loud and sudden. He jumps - they all do - and spills some of his tea with a curse. She doesn't wait for him, all-but leaping up from the chaise longue and striding out of the staff room, leaving them behind. From there she walks quickly, racing her own demons out of the library, through the foyer full of relics and out into dull daylight. She wishes she smoked, to give her fingers something to do, but just settles for sitting on the steps and looking out at the street, staring without really seeing the building opposite and the people moving in and out of the market square nearby. 

She glances back when the door behind creaks open to spit Booker out beside her, but he doesn’t sit, standing with his hands shoved into his pockets. He looks better than she had expected considering it has been a solid decade since they last saw one another. She feels so old to be thinking of them in terms of decades. How can grief last for so long, impact so much, when coming from such a short relationship? She had - _they had_ \- known Quỳnh for a matter of weeks, months for Andy's part but just barely. How can such a small thing have such a big consequence for two entire lives?

"Sit down, Booker," Andy sighs, when she has gone round and round on that thought several times in her head without any new answers jumping out at her. Booker awkwardly perches beside her a little too far away to be comfortable. He does not say a word but is hellishly tense, taut as a bowstring and equally as fragile. _Would he snap, if she tugged too hard?_ "Something is going on," she says eventually, instead of addressing the hollowness of his cheeks or of her heart. "It feels… Familiar."

"Yes," he rasps, clearing his throat to repeat himself. "Yes. Too familiar."

"Do you think…"

"I don't know. I've barely been outside. Andy-"

"It could be though, right?" she speaks over him, trying to stop whatever it is he wants to say in that pained, beseeching tone of voice. "It could be the same. We did not stop it last time, it was never fixed. But we _could_ still fix it."

He sighs, running his hands through his hair. Fuck, he even looks well groomed; trimmed and neatened in the beard, hair washed and brushed. How is it that between the two of them _Booker_ is the one looking put together?

Andy's inner voice spitefully suggests it is because he never loved Quỳnh like she did, never mourned her like she did. That he is clearly disrespecting her lost memory by moving on. Strangely, however, Nile's voice chimes in afterwards to tell the first voice to shut up and set her free from shackling grief, if not for herself then for Quỳnh.

_For Quỳnh._

"I want to fix it, Booker," she whispers. "Twenty years she will have been lost and this is the first chance in all that time that I have seen to make it right."

"It is not your mistake to fix, Andy, please. It was mine. I took you away from her, I imagined answers that were not there - I let her die."

"You let her?" Andy scoffs. They both wince at the memory of the times she had yelled exactly those words with far more vitriol and hate than now. "No," Andy continues after a moment of quiet between them. "This is Quỳnh. No one 'let her' do anything. There was…” She can hardly believe her own words. “There was no stopping it."

Booker whips his head around to stare at her. Probably pleading for her to stop and yet continue at the same time, if his thoughts are in a turmoil anything akin to hers. She looks back, vision beginning to blur at the bottom edge, heart still dragging itself slowly out of its rusty, frozen position and back into action. "We could not- I could not-"

"It could not be stopped," Booker echoes, terror lacing the words that breathe out of his chest on a wheeze. What is he scared of, here? "Do you really believe that?"

"I don't know, I don't know. But I have to, I think. What good is it doing us now, to ignore the possibility? I am so tired, Sébastien. Tired of missing her and missing you, and tired of all the drinking and despair. My house… Twice in the past week I have had someone in my house. I had forgotten it was made for that, to hold lives inside its walls. I have woken up there so many times to remember how empty it is, and forgot that it is not meant to be that way. _We_ are not meant to be this way."

"Is this Nile’s influence?"

"No. Yes? Maybe, I cannot- I cannot say for sure. All of it is happening at once, I think. I cannot say what it was that started it but here we are. Are you really prepared to question that?"

"I am if it will not last. You and I have reconciled before, Andy." They had, briefly, before Booker had gone back off the rails again and started spewing nonsense about secret societies and bizarre history that had spiralled them both back down into vicious arguments that had torn them far apart from each other once again. _A decade… Fuck._

Andy shrugs, stretching her legs out on the green stone. It looks as oily as ever under her feet, the strangest material she has ever seen. If she had the energy she would be curious again - as she had been at the start - as to why this building of all buildings is made from a different stone than the rest, and what that stone might actually be. But Andy is beyond caring about the details and intricacies of architecture and local geology. There are other things to chase answers to now. But will Booker chase them with her?

Booker hesitates so long she wonders if he has fallen asleep, but his eyes are open when she checks. He looks back, sensing her eyes on him, and then stretches his neck slowly up, and nods it jerkily back down. "I want more than anything, to believe you."

"So you will?"

"So, I will try, until this is done with. If we can change something, fix something? Then that will- that will help."

"I see."

"I-” All of a sudden it seems to explode out of him. “I cannot keep living in the shadow of your grief like this, Andy, not like this - Nile has shown me how to live again, what lies on the other side and I want that more than anything, I want to stop dying for my penance to you-"

"I never asked you to!" Her own anger is back. She grits her teeth and stands up and he stands up as well, taking a step backwards towards the library, retreating.

"I know," he says, hands up and eyes downcast, drawing inwards again. "I know. I put it on myself. But you cannot tell me it did not make you feel better to see it there."

Andy hisses, clutching at her head and her hair. It is not untrue. And yet the full truth of it is worse than that, because they have _both_ been using the other as an excuse to draw this pain out longer and longer and maybe _that_ is how Quỳnh's death has lingered for so long. Because she and Booker have been passing it back and forth, an invisible blade in each other's backs that they've been stopping the other from pulling out at every opportunity. And now at last - if it is actually possible - perhaps they can let go and let the blades drop free; let the wounds start to clean and close up.

The thought that Quỳnh would have laughed uproariously at her allegory makes Andy's mouth twitch. She had always been more prone to strange poetry than Quỳnh, with her solid and dependable grounding in reality and her deft grasp of words.

Booker is still watching her when she lets go of her hair and relaxes with a carefully blown out breath. "Shall we agree to concern ourselves with ourselves and stop carrying weight we have not put on each other?" she asks quietly. "For Quỳnh. And Nile, and whoever else is in danger this time round."

"This time round?" Booker repeats, and then his eyes go wide. "Andy. What if that's it? It repeats itself. _History_ repeats itself. Maybe what I read wasn't bullshit but instead - a clue."

"What are you talking about now? Don’t you dare turn back to your obsessions Booker, I will not stay for that."

"Andy please. I- I think I need to speak with Nile."

"And about what I offered?"

"Yes, yes," he agrees, shifting nervously. She would be annoyed at the sudden change of subject, but the idea is taking root in her chest and starting to tug at her heart, sending it into the steady beat that precedes the wild exuberance of finding a new lead to follow. She is almost surprised to recognise the sensation.

When Booker lopes back inside, Andy is close behind, darkly amused at finding herself the one on the heels of the sad man, this time.

* * *

"Nile," Booker calls, racing back inside just as Nile is resetting the typewriter. "Andy said- and I thought- I have an idea. You will want to hear this."

He is alight with a quiet passion beyond anything Nile has seen from him so far, eyes wild with it. "When we- last time, I thought I found something. Something to prove that this madness was not simply a one-off, that it had happened before and it was more of a cycle. I could not find it again although I looked, but- but what if I was right? If there was something hidden that could tell us how it has all happened before-"

"Wait, wait!" Nile begs him, standing up and raising her hands, trying to placate his almost manic monologue. Joe had been off in the stacks again, but he pokes his head in shortly after the stream of words starts, to listen to Booker. "What… Why is this relevant? I want to record the truth, but we don’t need every single piece of information for that."

"No, absolutely," Booker agrees, reaching out to take her hands in his and tentatively squeeze them. 

He opens his mouth to speak but Andy is the one to finish the explanation, startling Joe into a full-bodied jump of surprise at her sudden reappearance. "But perhaps it can help now. It is happening again, Nile. All the signs are there. A little different, perhaps, but I feel it in the air now. Twenty years- must be our unlucky number."

Nile sits down heavily on her chair and blinks. She looks at the papers she had been typing the story on. She looks at Andy, and Booker, and even Joe. She thinks to herself for a moment, reevaluating everything she had thought and decided, and wondering when it was she had missed the fact that the puzzles she has claimed since arriving are all just… The same puzzle. Perhaps even Joe fits in, if there is something to this ‘repeated madness’ Booker has brought up. Perhaps Nicky will know something about the Church’s involvement, as Andy had clearly thought. Perhaps Nile is here at just the right time to make a difference, probing the right questions to allow Andy and Booker to make the connections they need to.

_Fate? Destiny? Sheer bloody good fortune?_

_Or misfortune._

"Where do we start?" Nile asks, setting her jaw firmly and raising it, ready for battle. Throwing herself bodily in at the deep end without any further hesitation. She is all in.

"With the missing information. With those files next door that you spent all that time organising. If the information is there in some form we need to find it. If we do, it is evidence, hard proof of the phenomenon, and not just that but-"

"A potential blueprint to what might be coming next," Joe adds enthusiastically, shrugging when their eyes all turn his way. He grins. "Not just a pretty face, eh?"

Nile grins back; Andy's lips twitch and she ducks her head to hide her smile; and Booker? Booker reaches out to clasp Joe on the shoulder, and bursts into a broad grin, cracking his face wide with brightness.

And then they set to work.

* * *

The Lofty Park church is cold today. The wind whistles through it in ways that make the draught sound like soft voices, sighs or distant screams depending on how one listens. Nicolò tries not to listen at all, engrossed as he is in preparing his sermon for the next service, just two days away. He flicks through his Bible - the green, leather-bound book with its Elvagyodask cross, his congratulations gift as a child after his final blessing - reading the words he had highlighted and trying to remember what he had been thinking back then, two days ago, to choose these passages.

_Lead us to plenty and to prosperity, grant us the wit and wherewithal to take what you provide and prove ourselves worthy._

_Silence our hunger and let not our sin befall our children, for they are starved and we are able to find salvation to their ends. Merciful God deliver for us our needs._

_To solve the problem; first identify the sacrifice to be made._

Nicolò blinks at that, frowning and squinting closer. He does not remember that part, but there is no one else that would come in just to underline extra sentences, for the purpose of messing with his service, so it has to have been him. In a quiet or tired moment perhaps. It is not so far from what he wants to talk about really, but a little more dire than the comfort he had decided on. He sighs and scribbles a few more words onto the paper laid out, closing the book and tracing the symbol on the front idly as he thinks. Joe is safe, in the library - of that Nicolò is sure. He has no idea why but Joe's face had made it eminently clear that this was a newfound peace, something even Nicolò has never seen in his eyes.

 _And thus they were forgiven, and their lives became full of life and light,_ he adds beside the rest, feeling the words slot into place with the others. A message of hope in a dire time. It is to be a slightly special service; the occasion of his ordination, becoming Father Nicolò. It just so happens to be his thirtieth birthday as well, but that is no cause for celebration, although his evening after has been set aside for a minor celebration.

He leans back in his chair and glances at the wall, beyond which the space for the church cross lies, empty and noticeably bare. He wonders how long it will take for that space to be filled - someone had said no time at all; someone else had said it would be a gift on his birthday, even if such a thing should never and could never really be given as a gift. It was for their God, not Nicolò. Still, he cannot deny he is looking forward to having it back, so that he can lay a hand on it and gaze up at the small glass window above in times of uncertainty. 

"Uncertainty is unbecoming of a priest," he tells himself with a wry smile. "And yet."

And yet. Joe is unwell, or further beyond his help than he had realised when they’d first met. Nicky cannot stop loving him for that. _Not even death would stop his feelings_. 

Nicolò stands up from his desk, plucking the holy text from its spot and clutching it for comfort, heading out into the main hall. He walks to the front pew, nodding graciously at the two men hunched in the back, and sits, bowing his head over the book and trying to pray. He asks for more time, with Joe. He asks for peace for Andromache and for Booker. He asks for a safe visit and return home for Nile. She is kind and she deserves it more than anyone, even if she had been unfortunately instrumental in leading the Detective to Joe.

In the end, had that not been a blessing? Who knows what might have happened to Joe without their collective help…

"Excuse me, Father?" a low voice interrupts his thoughts. Nicolò blinks his eyes open and looks up to see one of the men from the back has approached him, smiling widely down.

"Brother, in fact, but I am at your service either way. How may I help?" Nicolò answers, shifting to leave room for the man to sit beside him, turning his shoulders to encourage a conversation.

The man lowers himself down, placing his hat in his lap and drumming his fingers on it. "I think it is me that will be doing the helping. I have come from the main church, with news about your ordination? The priests there would like to extend their offer to hold the service there, give it the grandeur that it deserves. More room as well."

Nicolò blinks, a little flutter of pride and warmth in his chest. "Oh, that is very kind. I will of course accept. Ought I to prepare anything but the sermon?"

"Oh no, the rest will be sorted down there. You may of course invite anyone you like, guests will be welcome. I believe you have been in touch with the al-Kaysanis? It would be wonderful if you would extend an invitation their way. The Church would be grateful and honoured if they would attend. Yusuf in particular, as he will no doubt be involved in the business soon enough, and we cannot seem to get word to him ourselves. You are friends, is that not right?"

Nicolò refuses to react beyond a quick nod. "I will see what I can do. What time should I arrive?"

The man stands up and holds his hand out for shaking. Nicolò accepts, but stays seated. "The afternoon will do just fine. After midday but before the sun starts to sink."

"Alright, my thanks."

"And ours," the man replies, flipping his hat back on and tugging the brim briefly. "Until then."

Nicolò nods, turning back to the front as the man leaves. He hears his companion join him, and they slip out, leaving Nicky alone in the church. Not an uncommon occurrence during the day, but certainly one he relishes whenever he can. He stands up, moving to the font at the front. The water there could use replacing, the muddy brown of the lake silt settling around the rim. He peers down into it, squinting until he can see his own reflection, rather than the bottom of the bowl. He looks tired, and older than he normally does whenever he catches sight of himself in the mirror at the Jerusalem Inn, fresh from Joe's arms and the joy of laughter and love.

Will they ever recapture that ease again? Joe's affliction had ended once before - no, not ended. Merely abated, waiting to resurface these past few days, or weeks. Weeks! Weeks he has been suffering anew and never once did he say anything about it, beyond the things he could not hide, such as the dreams. The lack of remembering now, and the strange peace of the library, are of significant concern - more so than the rest, but will Nicky confront his love about it? Not while the memory of the lost fear Joe had displayed on his face and in his voice is so clear in Nicky's mind, no. He will support and love Joe through this and help where he can, and if all he can offer is a silent, soft place to land, then he will perform that role to the best of his abilities and further.

He stands there a while longer until a few new figures shuffle inside to sit in the quiet, and then he walks, checking the candles and cleaning away any dust, footsteps slow to ensure he is available but not hovering. No one talks to him however, and the day passes in solitude without Nicky uttering another word.

Just as he is settling in to finish some work on his sermon before hurrying off to Joe - via the boarding house to fetch them some things for the night - a final visitor makes an appearance. Another priest, one of his many distant cousins, who drops off a note with an itinerary for the occasion to come and provides a small amount of polite conversation.

"It will be quite the day, to have your birthday and ordination all at once. And possibly even your new cross too, if the carpenters finish it in time," she says, perched primly in the spare chair across from him while he scans the paper. "You must be excited."

"Oh, very," Nicolò agrees with a mild smile. "It is a great honour, of course. I am delighted for my church in particular, that I will be able to offer more to them."

"I am sure you offer them plenty already, Brother. You have always been a natural priest of our town. Although, the lakewater in your font is running dry."

"I will be replacing it tomorrow. I had thought to do it the day after, in preparation for the ordination service, but as it is no longer being held here I see no reason to delay further."

"Perhaps-" she replies, tapping her chin and looking off with slightly narrowed eyes, thinking. "Perhaps I might suggest you in fact _do_ delay? Bringing fresh water after the ceremony, with the cross potentially reinstated, will be of particular significance, would you not agree?"

Nicolò considers it. It is a sound suggestion, even if he balks at the idea of leaving the font low for the extra time that will take. "I suppose. I will consider it."

"No, no I insist," his cousin says, leaning forwards, voice firming with conviction. "The main church will be doing the same, replenishing after the ceremony. It will be excellent to do all at once. A true symbolic moment for the town. You must accept!"

He is surprised by the passion but understands it completely - they are all bound by their shared faith and that faith can defy logic at times. It certainly does add a certain special something to the act that is rare and indeed significant. "Very well, I accept. It will be a first for me as a Father, I cannot deny that would make me very proud."

"Pride is a sin, Brother, but I doubt any of us could begrudge you that. Things will be so different after the ceremony, it stands to reason you would gain some personal pleasure from it. Being a little _greedy_ for such things is perfectly normal."

"I will try and curb that feeling."

"On the contrary," she says, getting up from the chair with a small, knowing smile. "In times of such hunger, we are all allowed to indulge somewhat. It does no one any good to deny the truth to ourselves, really."

Though he is not sure he agrees there - his unfinished sermon pointedly awaiting him beneath his hands - Nicolò inclines his head. They exchange a brief farewell and in the wake of her departure he decides that tonight is not for worrying and staying late. He wants Joe. He will go to Joe.

The outdoor kitchen still needs him however, at least to get started, which takes another good while. People are already arriving before the pots are fully heated, boding ill for their numbers tonight. _So many hungry people, more and more by the day…_ It hurts his heart to see them and to know that he cannot help them all. He wants to promise them that he feels the same pinch of hunger they do; that he is gaining no special treatment for his position.

He is not sure they would believe him.

"Goodnight," he murmurs to the two volunteers who will take over for the night, a quiet young couple that silently nod back and do not halt in their tasks for a moment as he leaves. The queue is long, stretching out into the road and a little way down it as Nicolò hurries past. He averts his eyes, but none of them look at him anyway, focus fixed on the food that awaits, and well trained to pretend anyone with a black shirt and a flash of white at the neck simply does not exist.

Perhaps while he fetches the water from the lake, newly Father Nicolò, he will attempt to bless it, and pray for change when it is in his church with the new cross. Three changes all at once might attract a few others.

The weather is not so inclined to change however, and the rain starts up again as he strides through the streets to the boarding house. He slips inside to the first rumble of distant, threatening thunder, sighing to himself. The same awful sight awaits him in their room - _how could he have forgotten?_ It feels like a risk to touch the evidence of Joe's episode, so he leaves it be again, although it makes him nauseous to be around. Nicky slides a drawer gingerly open to reveal more stacks of paper, these ones crumpled and crushed into balls among their mixed clothes. He wonders why these have been deemed unworthy when so many were allowed to stay as they were, and the thinness, the delicacy of the lines visible under the creases, further that curiosity.

The first one he straightens out is of his own hands, a simple sketch. The next is himself again, serving someone at the kitchen. The final one is the lower half of a face, mouth open to speak, or scream, or gasp for breath. All three, and the remaining crumpled balls, end up in his pockets before he can think better of it, and he works on packing up a little case for their overnight stay in the library. With a last glance back he finds himself running out into the rain, a horrible repeat of the night before.

Hopefully this one will not end the same way - alone and frightened and stricken with fear.

* * *

Many hours into reading, rereading and taking notes on every piece of information Nile had categorised in the study, they are all ready to stop for the day. The initial euphoria of realisation had worn off quickly into quiet studious determination, but that is starting to wear thin as what they hope to find remains elusively out of reach. Oh, there are useful recollections of things that had happened in Booker's spidery, faded handwriting, but beyond the actual details of daily life in Elvagyodask twenty years earlier the content is frustratingly absent.

Booker apologises over and over, his hair growing wild as he clutches at it time and time again in misery, and Joe's wild optimism is starting to falter along with their momentum. The rain starting is the final straw, snapping Joe's smile into a frown of concern for Nicky, who will have to traverse it to join them soon enough. Nile knows the signs for what they are; the tiring nature of research is familiar to her and Booker (despite his behaviour indicating otherwise), but the others might be struggling with the lack of quick, easy results. Andy should know better from her years of detective work, but perhaps, like Booker, she too has forgotten the energy that patience takes.

"I think that is enough for today," Andy mutters, dropping her pile like it's scalding. "I need a drink."

"Andy-"

"Not like that, Nile. Just… I need a _break_."

Nile watches her leave for the staff room in concern, then watches Booker in the same way as he escapes out into the stacks. Joe sighs, stretching and leaning back against the desk leg he had been sitting by, surrounded by a fan of papers he has been slowly working through. He sends her a look and a quick, sympathetic smile, before sucking his bottom lip back into his mouth to continue chewing on it, fingers tapping on his knee.

"If you need to stop as well," Nile says, reaching out to still them, "then feel free. In my experience in academia the first rule is that it will always take longer to do research than you expect. Something I should have remembered and told you all, really."

"Oh it's alright. I do not think I could do much else while I am waiting for Nicky. I might as well keep busy."

"If you're sure."

He nods and turns his palm up to squeeze her fingers. "I am, Nile. But thank you. It is lovely you care."

She leaves him to it, shuffling through the next pile to begin filtering through for useful information, and goes after Booker. He is in the stacks as she had thought, but is not doing much more than standing, running his fingers over the spines of the history section, frowning.

"Book?"

"Oh, hello Nile. I was just…" he trails off, giving her a rueful shrug. She pats his arm and nods her head to get him to follow, heading around and out to the bank of windows, about as far away from the staff room as it is possible to be in the library itself.

"Are you alright?" she murmurs when they get there, leaning on the windowsill and searching his face for any signs he is trying to hide things away when he answers. He sighs, rubbing his eyes and down over his mouth, and then shrugs.

"I think I might be? I feel a little strange, to be so involved in something again. And talking to Andy? It’s all wonderful, really, but then I remember why we were _not_ talking and I feel such guilt and sadness all over again. Every time. Am I not suffering enough?"

"Should you be?"

"Well, there is a voice in my head that says just that," Booker agrees. His eyes crinkle a little and he nudges her. "It sounds just like you, in fact. And I want to listen to it, but to be perfectly honest Nile - I am terrified."

That is a surprise. "What do you mean? How can you be terrified of that?" she asks. He looks away from her and reaches out to settle a loose window lock back into place firmly as it rattles in the wind.

"Well, for several reasons. I suppose they are not entirely logical, but logic has not ruled where emotion has been king for a very long time. I am scared I will be dishonouring Quỳnh, for one, and risking forgetting her. I am scared that I no longer remember how to be a full person, and that I will fail at relearning it and return to the bottles that have filled in my holes for the last long while. I suppose above all else though; I am terrified that this will turn out to be for nothing and that it will finish me off where nothing in the past has quite done the trick. Hope is a heavy yoke to bear while climbing so high… What if I fall? Will I shatter? What about Andy? We cannot bear to carry each other and yet we are bound forever to the same rises and falls."

"You are both grown adults and individuals," Nile interjects gently. "Your grief and how you deal with it is your own, Book, not shared. You cannot do that to yourselves or each other."

"I do not think either of us know how to untangle now."

"Well, we can start by setting you on your feet and on the right track. Take a look back to when we first met, see how far you've come already in just these few days. And let me work on Andy a bit, alright?" She winks and he huffs his half-laugh, but he is at least still smiling. They rejoin the others in companionable silence, accepting the strong tea that Andy makes them all with gratitude and settling into the staff room. Joe is still rustling around in the study fretfully, but he is the first to notice when the library doors creak open and Nicky arrives.

"There you are! Oh you're _soaked_ ," he cries in dismay, bundling the soggy priest through to sit down on the chaise longue, relieving him of his outer layers and suitcase and prodding him to take Joe's own untouched mug. Nicky takes his hand and refuses to let go until Joe sits beside him and wraps an arm around his shoulders, and only then does the priest greet the rest of them. Nile smiles in amusement and shakes her head at their antics.

"How has the day been?" Nicky asks, sipping his drink. Andy, now ensconced in the chair that had been Booker's, glances at her and tilts her head for Nile to start.

"Well, we had a bit of a breakthrough," she explains, getting herself comfortable as well. "Booker and Andy realised there could be a pattern to the ah, strange incidents in town. Twenty years ago there was a death and at the time Book thought there was a connection to another such death before that, which could mean a connection to things happening... Now."

"With Joe?" Nicky asks in surprise. The room falters and they all look at one another. It had not even been considered. Even Joe looks surprised to have his affliction put side by side with the rest. Booker clears his throat.

"I suppose it is possible, if there is a shared madness in the town itself, that it is part of that? Something relating to a chemical change? But Joe's episodes seem a little more consistent throughout his life, rather than concurrent with the usual wave of sudden onset issues we would expect to see in these shared experiences."

"Oh, I see. But the town is not acting any more mad than ever, what are you talking about?" the priest asks, eyebrows twisted in confusion.

Andy snorts. "Do your fellow preachers often make a habit of being so out and about and visible in town? No. Have there ever been attempts to establish a relationship with the al-Kaysanis, since they arrived? No. Something is going on there, and with the state of the town as it is there is a good chance a catalyst will come along and the whole place will go wild."

"But," Nicolò says, glancing at Joe and hesitating. Andy waves for him to go on. "But that does not make any sense. The family was already here, twenty years ago, why were they not involved then? As for the activity, well." He shifts and draws himself up. Nile thinks he looks both proud and a little embarrassed, shy about it. "There is a slightly larger service than usual soon. A celebration of sorts. For me."

"For you?" Joe asks, tilting his head at Nicolò's sheepish nod. "Whatever do you mean, my love?"

"I was going to tell you, but then you ran to me, and then there were your dreams… I have been distracted by you somewhat, Yusuf."

" _Nicky_ ," Joe sighs, lifting Nicolò's hand to his lips to kiss it sweetly. Nile clears her throat and raises her eyebrows pointedly, highly amused to note the blush on Nicky's face and the total absence of it on Joe's unrepentant one. "Alright, alright. Nicky will you please explain a little more about this ceremony? It seems it might be relevant to our day of activity."

"Yes, quite," Andy adds dryly, but everyone can see the softness of her mouth despite the narrowness of her eyes.

Nicolò rolls his shoulders and rubs the back of his neck with his free hand, drawing a finger under and around his collar to tug the insert free of his shirt. "Ah well, it is only that I will be made a Father of the church, and also my birthday, as it happens, although the celebration is certainly more for the former. Either way it will be a fairly large service, for Elvagyodask. Nothing untoward." He frowns though, cutting his eyes sideways to where Joe is already looking at him. "They did ask if I would ensure you would be there. The patronage of the al-Kaysanis is, as you have rightfully said, something of a desire in recent times. As we two are known to be acquaintances and in frequent contact they asked if I would invite you personally - apparently your absence, or rather silence, has been noted."

"That doesn't mean it is not suspicious," Andy says stubbornly, pursing her lips when Nicky rolls his eyes. "A big ceremony and required attendance from the man suffering most from moments of lacking lucidity? All at the same time? Even if it is entirely benign it is strange timing! Why now? Why not before? Why not later?"

"Don't you start shouting at Nicky, he is not responsible for that," Joe says, waving his hand in dismissal. "It is not his fault he was sent to talk to me. And before you say anything, those meetings were just because of the food initiative. We were not supposed to ever discuss anything else."

Nile's thoughts catch on something in that sentence, turning them over and looking at them a few different ways while Joe finishes what he is saying until she realises what she wants to ask. "Joe, sorry. Did you say Nicky was _sent_ to you?"

The two men look at each other and Booker meets Nile's eyes briefly, chewing on his cheek. She tries to convey her reassurance and determination with a quick smile and prays it bolsters his wavering certainty. He has fallen worryingly silent, and his drawn face does not seem promising. _Please don't back down now_ , she prays silently. _This feels right. We're on the right track. We have to be._

"He was," Joe agrees slowly, still looking at Nicky. He drags his face around to Nile and shrugs. "But again - it was in connection to the food initiative. And mainly because I wanted to be involved, so I believe my parents had made it clear to the Church that I would be the person to talk to."

"I see." Not quite so promising, but at this point Nile is unwilling to overlook any single detail that comes her way. The most mundane things have already proven to be more relevant than expected multiple times over. "And Nicky," Nile says, waiting for his eyes to lift next. "Why were _you_ sent?"

"What?" he and Joe both ask. Andy sits forwards, expression shrewd and calculating, catching on to what Nile is fishing for, hopefully. Booker keeps flicking his own gaze between them all, silently taking it all in, posture and expression slumping deeper and deeper into something dismayed that Nile does not like, the more Nicolò breaks down the points of their case. "Well because I was the head of the closest church, I suppose."

"But why would that make any sense? Not that you aren't wonderful - put that glare away, Joe. But surely a more senior priest, and one from the main church, would be a better choice? They could feed a lot more, and be more easily accessed by a wider spread of the townsfolk, than up in Lofty Park, do you not agree? I am assuming the main church is in the centre of town here."

Nicky frowns. "It is not, precisely, although it is larger. We are not far from it now. But the proximity of my church to Yusuf’s home is not insignificant either. And besides; it was a trial. Would it not also make sense to start small?"

"I would not say so, but you might know better than I do," Nile concedes carefully. She does not want to push, especially when Nicolò is both confident he is right and also currently more involved with the wider Church than what sounds like is the usual state of affairs, and Nile is starting to understand some of Andy's warnings. Because, whether provable or not; they had almost certainly been involved in something twenty years earlier. They certainly could not possibly have been entirely _unaware_ , and refusing to admit to it is more suspicious than anything else. Now, Nicky's position placed in counterpoint to Joe between the Church and the al-Kaysanis, as well as his being at the centre of whatever it is that is going to happen soon? It feels significant somehow.

Nile doesn't know how the pieces fit quite yet, but she thinks they will be able to figure something out if they can just get enough of them out into the light to examine. All she needs to do is nudge enough facts to the surface.

"Are you suggesting I am involved in something, to hurt Joe?" Nicky asks in a small voice, looking directly at her - and therefore, not at Joe - when he says it. "I would not do that, Nile. You must believe me."

"Maybe not consciously, Nicky, but that is no guarantee that everyone else's motivations are equally moral," she says, as kindly as she can. Even so he draws in on himself with a haunted expression, head hanging, ignoring Joe's quiet attempts to draw him back out again.

"There is no guarantee they are not either," Booker interjects, taking a few of the empty mugs and standing up. He pauses there and looks around at them. "I know I said it felt the same, but that- it does not mean what happened to Quỳnh will happen again, even if we are right. Maybe the strangeness will pass without any deaths. It would help to know if previous occurrences had also yielded victims, but without that- it might be better to simply hope for the best."

"Here?" Andy challenges. "In this town? You really want to hope for the best in this place, among these people?" She scoffs, a harsh sound full of bitterness. If Nile was not so pleased with their progression from silence to speaking once again she would step in before it gets too nasty. "It was that exact naïveté that ruined us last time. We did not take the threat seriously enough and Quỳnh was taken."

"We-" Booker closes his eyes and swallows thickly. "We don't know that she was _taken_ , Andy. Not for certain."

"She was here and then she was gone, and everything went back to normal! Coincidences like that do not just happen! Not now, and not then. No leads at all? No witnesses, no _body_?!"

Nile's eyes move back and forth like she is watching a debate.

"Other people have been lost to the lake."

"The lake! That is _bullshit_ , Sébastien, and you know it! She was local; she knew the roads and she never needed to pass the docks. So do not try and tell me the _lake_ took her! Not without help."

"Alright," Booker rasps, holding the mugs close to his chest. "Alright, Andy, I won't. But you are a detective. Remember that it is a possibility."

He slips away into the kitchenette to hide and once again, as has become their habit, Nile follows him. Joe and Nicky start to talk quietly, a pleasant hum that also conveniently provides a cover for Nile's own quiet words.

"You've changed your mind already?" she asks, trying not to let it come out like an attack. It is hard - she is both confused and a little hurt by his sudden change of heart. Booker sighs, slowly washing the mugs, and shakes his head.

"I don't know. I never know, do I, Nile? I do not know if trying to better myself is the right choice; I do not know if hoping is a good idea; I do not know if all the things that seemed to add up this morning looked that way because perhaps we simply didn't have the full picture. It seemed possible- likely- motivating even! But you heard Nicky. There is an explanation for all of it."

"You know, Nicky doesn't hold all the answers any more than we do. His side of the story is simply his side, Book. It is worth remembering that too."

The tense, sloped line of his shoulders as he stands at the sink and methodically washes is a clear expression of how much he both wants to believe that and is not sure that he can. Nile breathes out slowly to calm her reflexive emotions down, and then wraps an arm around his back for a loose hug from the side, resting her head on his shoulder momentarily. Admittedly, she does not understand. But she thinks she can at least imagine how difficult it would be to go through so many changes all at once - to be overcome by the sweep of enthusiasm that had taken all four of them, and then to slowly feel it ebb away again over the course of the day. Nicky's replies must have felt like the final nails in the yoke Booker had spoken about before, threatening to plummet him back down after putting all his strength into clawing up.

And with what Andy had told them - about Booker's fixation on this very missing piece of information, and the tragedy that it had resulted in? Nile does not find it entirely surprising he would be wary, spooked by his own conviction and all too ready to bolt from it at the first sign of being wrong. Some scars are invisible but all too devastating in their impact.

"I will leave you to it then, Book," she decides, offering him the space without her pushing for a while, to decompress and perhaps talk himself through all of his conflicting thoughts.

"Nile-" he says, before she can go too far. "I'm sorry. I wish I could be more… Consistent? Brave? I am not sure."

Booker's blue eyes beg her to forgive him and Nile cannot help but smile. "Book, when are you going to realise that you are doing this for _you_ , not for me?" she chides. "I don't need any apologies. And just for the record - I think you're plenty brave."

He looks at her and then places the mug and cloth in his hands down, opening his arms. Nile steps in quickly, hugging him with a tight grip and trying to let him know that she is here, that she is beside him on his path. Booker holds her back the same way, arms warm and careful but sagging into her with gratitude and affection. "You are a gift, Nile Freeman. A wonderful angel sent my way," he murmurs when they part, cupping a hand over her shoulder to underscore his words.

"Just a person, trying to help another person that only needs a hand in support," she disagrees. "Now, I think it is time we ate something and sorted out where we're all going to sleep before any arguments break out. I have not had a sleepover like this since middle school. I suppose we will not be sharing our secret affections and sharing tips for dressing well, but who is to say?"

His soft chuckles light not only _her_ face as she wanders out into the staff room proper, but Joe and Nicky's, who look up and smile. Even Andy - eyes cast down so her eyelashes shadow and hide them - has a hint of an uptick at the edges of her lips.

It is not the worst way to end the whiplash of a day, from up to down to up to down to come to rest in a tentative middleground. Even the bickering and heated discussion after dinner over who gets to sleep where - culminating in a very smug Andy getting comfortable on the chaise while Nile and Booker curl into their armchairs, and Joe and Nicky stretch out together on the rug under the blankets Nicky had packed - are somehow soothing. Even if they are not any closer to answers - are not even sure where to look next - Nile finds herself falling asleep in good company with a smile on her face, and she cannot complain about that.

_Detective Andromache, known as Andy, in front of Elvagyodask_


	7. Clarity and complications

It is an entirely novel concept; waking well-rested. In his life he remembers perhaps two, maybe three times when that had been the case, when dreams or fitfulness or other disturbances throughout the night had not ensured he awoke groggy and bleary-eyed, struggling to adapt to consciousness as it befell him.

This soft rise into the waking world, even with the aches and pains of sleeping on the floor, is so joyous as to be a miracle.

Joe wakes smiling.

* * *

"Good morning," Andy rasps at them all, dragging her feet over into the kitchen and grumbling about the options, before setting the hot water to boil. "Up and at it. Get your breakfast while you can."

Nicky stretches out, raising his arms high above his head and feeling Joe tighten his grip around his waist, nuzzling the back of his neck. "Good morning," the priest chuckles, sitting up. Joe gets dragged along by the grip he refuses to relinquish, and they both sit quietly together while the others stir to. Joe hooks his chin over Nicky's shoulder to wave at Nile while she yawns, and Booker starts awake with a snort that makes a little wave of amusement ripple through them all.

No one asks yet, but Nicky sees the glances Joe's way, particularly from Andy's corner, and knows the conversation is not far off. They have hardly forgotten the reason they had come to be sharing the little room for the night after all, despite all the chaos over their apparent conspiracy theory fervour the day before. He is still not sure how he feels about that, but he cannot argue their dedication, even if he thinks the facts are somewhat- _entirely_ misguided. Incorrect, really.

Perhaps he had hoped they would forget the Joe situation under the circumstances, but it seems he will have no such luck today.

"So," Nile starts, when she is picking at her last piece of bread. "I think we're all curious about your night, Joe. Especially because I, for one, slept like a log."

"Like a what?" They all squint at her. Booker frowns. "How do you sleep like a log?"

"You know, still and silent? Just a colloquialism then. Anyhow! Back to you, Joe."

He shifts his shoulders and stretches, rolling his neck around, and then shrugs, still smiling. "I feel wonderful. The bed leaves a lot to be desired but the sleep itself was excellent."

"My bed was fine," Andy interjects around a mouthful, a quick flash of a smile stealing across her face and lightening it as Joe splutters indignantly and Nicolò scoffs along with him, dropping a good amount of years away from her tired demeanour. It seems Joe has not been the only one to profit from their night in the library. "What?" she asks, blinking innocently as she steals a last piece of dried sausage from Nile's plate.

"Alright, so you're funny now," Joe snarks back, but there is no heat to his voice and he is still entirely relaxed against Nicky's side, leaning comfortably into him. "But really. I slept fantastically. I think there is something about this place. Perhaps just being so far from home?"

Booker is the one who hums, and who has demonstrated the most insight into afflictions of the mind, so Booker is the one they look to. Nicky wonders if somewhere out there in the wider world there is actually a specialist who could help Joe beyond the guessing games they're indulging in here. Could someone exist in the world to take the worry and fear from Joe permanently, enabling him to live a life free of his terrors?

"I suppose it is possible? The brain is incredibly powerful. Who knows how much of it is caused by an actual affliction and how much is the imagination. Perhaps you had a particularly bad dream experience as a child and your mind has twisted itself into _thinking_ it should be suffering repeatedly, since. Perhaps it is a reaction to a change in your life recently. There is no hard and fast way to be sure that I know of - I am not a doctor Joe, I'm sorry." Booker twists his hands, but only until Nile reaches over to hold them and Joe shakes his head emphatically.

"Do not apologise, Book, you offer what you know and that is already a lot. Better than that quack of a doctor, certainly." The dark tone in Joe’s voice is echoed on Nicky's face, he knows. He feels the frown pulling his eyebrows and lips down, the memory of the way Joe had been finely trembling without even realising, bags packed and hidden in the shadow of the Church, promising he would explain when they had found rooms to stay in. And then he had explained, leaning back against Nicolò on the floor by the bed, simply holding on to each other. He had not known what to say but that had not mattered to Joe, who could hear it in the tight clutch of his arms and the short, choppy rhythm of his breathing instead.

Unfortunately, while he is scowling, Nicky also catches sight of the light dawning from the distant windows. "I have to go," he murmurs apologetically, turning to squeeze Joe's hand. "Will I find you here tonight again?"

The question is directed at Joe but Nicolò's eyes slant towards Andy. She thinks about it, and inclines her head. "He has been a great help in our work so far. If you are amenable to staying, Yusuf, then at the very least I will know where you are until this whole debacle is done with."

"Will you tell them?" Joe asks her. Andy rubs her forehead and then shakes her head in the negative. It seems her quota for softness is then filled, and she gets up to go off to the bathroom with a quiet word to excuse herself.

Nicky leaves soon after, loath to part from Joe and the comfortable, cosy atmosphere they have somehow built in the library, a ragtag team of unlikely companions, but his work calls and he expects to field further visits today, with the service the very next day. He looks back over Joe's shoulder while they embrace and smiles at Booker and Nile, lifting his hand in a brief wave and promising to return that evening again.

* * *

Joe feels the press of the absence when Nicky is gone like a presence of its own. He can cast it off, ignore it for a while, fill the space with words and tasks but it comes back again and again. Luckily they have plenty to do, even after Nicolò's counterarguments the night prior. Andy has not given up on her theory and Booker - despite his uncertainty and the visible wobble in belief he had let shake him the night before - is just as quietly raring to get going. _Nile must have spoken to him_ , Joe thinks.

The study room is as good a place as any to keep himself busy, peering through copious piles of notes and trying to see if anything stands out. Joe's own knowledge of the incident the pages reference is fairly limited, as he had only been newly a teenager, and still confined to the house. In fact, he is fairly sure - and says as much to the other three - that he had been on one of his final courses of drugs, stuck in bed in a rather unpleasant state that had left his head swimming and his chest heavy like he was drowning.

"That's awful," Nile murmurs when he tells them, and he looks up and to the side, thinking about it.

"Yes, it was," he agrees a moment later, accepting her hand and squeezing back. "But it was the last time my parents allowed any such treatments. Well, it _was_ the last time, until just recently. I found art not long after, I believe, and the dreams receded, or changed. I never really heard anything about what happened to your friend, nor any odd activity in town. I suppose it rather passed my family by, in the end."

With that in mind he uses the time reading through Booker's case files to learn what he can about it, this brief period in history that has so informed the lives of the people he is coming to know, as close to friends as he has ever had in his isolated life. Apart from Nicky. But Nicky does not count - Nicky defies the convention of Joe's life, and the definition of mere friends or lovers. He is all of that, but he is so much _more_.

Joe hesitates when the next pile he picks up seems to consist mostly of letters, rather than notes and theories. Or perhaps not letters, but diary entries, written to some unknown addressee. "Book? Are these yours?" he asks, holding them out before he can read them. "My apologies - I did not mean to pry, they were piled with the rest."

"What are they?" Nile asks, squinting over. She sees the paragraphs of shaky writing and winces. "Oh, Booker I'm sorry. I forgot to tell you I had found those, with everything that was going on. Booker?"

He is pale and shaking, lips pressed tightly together as his eyes scan the top page. Not a panicked shaking, but an overwhelmed one, and his lips twitch on a sad smile and a deep sigh. He looks up, making eye contact with Andy, who is leaned up against the wall right by the door, and then tentatively holds the pages out for her to see. Joe wants to crane his head to read but he knows the value of patience, reigning in his interminable curiosity.

"’Chère mappus’," she reads quietly, not a word or name Joe knows, looking up at Booker in a swift motion. "Are these…?"

"From after. I stopped writing them when it became clear that-" he falters and stops, bringing them back to his chest and standing up. With the papers still tightly clutched in one hand he rummages for something, thanking Nile quietly when she hands over a stack of what looks like photos. They are passed over to Andy quickly afterwards. "You should have these. They're only gathering dust here, which seems a shame. She put so much time and joy into each one."

"That damned camera," Andy huffs, rolling her suspiciously bright eyes. Joe exchanges a glance with Nile, who seems only somewhat more in the know than he is. She shakes her head once and then nods it in the direction of the door. Together they stand up, carefully edging around the two emotional adults, leaving them be for the moment. Nile goes so far as to lead him all the way out of the library and into the foyer, over to the display cases, eyes on the artefacts but attention clearly distracted.

"What does 'mappus' mean?" she asks him absently, touching the glass over a leather-bound book, a ship's log from _The Lear_ , the vessel that seems to be the subject and focus of the collection. Joe does not recognise the name, but it must have had some meaning to the Merricks, to have merited immortalising here in glass for ages to come.

"I don’t know, it is not a word in any of my languages I am afraid," he responds belatedly, shrugging when she frowns at him. "It must hold some meaning, or memory, to the two of them. _Three_ of them, I suppose."

"I see."

"It would make sense, would it not? I can imagine the desire to write to someone after they are gone, pretending they are only far away instead of out of reach forever. Even if you intend not to post them, I suppose."

"Well, I'm not so sure he succeeded in that?" Nile says with a wry smile. "The letter we received at Miskatonic… I didn’t see it myself but my supervisor, Professor Copley, said it was quite odd and rambling. Words over words. I suppose it is entirely possible that Booker accidentally wrote his letter to us over one of those. He was… Somewhat scattered when I first arrived."

"He is not entirely _not_ that way now," Joe jokes, softening the words with a grin. Nile inclines her head and chuckles along with him, stepping up to his side to loop her arm through his.

"But he is getting better. We all are. In different ways."

"I certainly hope that is the case, Nile."

"It is," she says confidently, lifting her chin in the air. _A proper little madam_ , he thinks, feeling the wonderful urge to tweak her nose for it. He has never had siblings, or friends of his own age, so he is not sure it is remotely appropriate but it feels so right and so childishly delightful that he lets himself go along with it, laughing loudly at her shriek and ducking away from the swat of her hand. He catches her up in a tight hug that traps her arms at her sides, lifting and spinning her the once before setting her firmly back on her feet and offering his elbow once more.

"Alright, alright. Shall we investigate some of the more interesting items here, Nile? I think I saw a beautifully wicked looking dagger over at the back last time, if you have an interest in such things." He is guessing, but by the glint in her eye and her enthusiastic nod he has guessed entirely right.

* * *

Something in the air between Andy and Booker is different when they return, Nile thinks. They are not acting in any way other than before, but there is something softer at the edges where the space between them meets, when they pass nearby or their eyes glance over the other. As though they have simply settled themselves back into place, paving stones flattened for a smooth walk where once there had been noticeable bumps and tripping hazards at the edges, unmatched and misaligned. That is not to say that everything is entirely perfect between them - Booker is still nervous and hesitant and Andy taciturn and quiet - but it is a vast, notable improvement.

Their research continues into the afternoon with little success, much like the day before. The incident grows in detail for them all however, a refresher for Booker and Andy but new to the younger two, which is a partial help, if only in that all the particular behaviours that match up seem to be the ones Nicolò had had an answer for this time round.

But that there are parallels at all, similarities twenty years apart? It does incite a little thrill of investigative curiosity, determination to find that one thing, in all four of them. Nile can see her own tenacity reflected in the intense scrutiny on Andy's face, Booker's thoughtful gazes off as he contemplates something or other. Even Joe seems to be struck with curiosity, flipping through page after page without pause.

They do have to pause however, for dinner, at which point the discovery is made that they have unfortunately run out of food. Nile offers to join Andy this time, and before long finds herself back out in the street in the sunset light, trying to keep up at Andy's side, reminiscent of the first days rushing around town with the Detective.

"I asked Booker earlier, or rather yesterday," Nile begins, breaking the comfortable silence between them. "But how are _you_? It is all a lot at once I'm sure. Is there anything I can offer that would help?"

Andy glances sideways at her with a faint smile, eyes crinkling. "Nile Freeman. Are you an angel, Nile, do you think? Sent in our hour of need to rescue us from the depths of despair and help us save a potential innocent soul to be lost?"

"Funny, that is just what Booker said," Nile mutters, rolling her eyes. Andy barks a laugh, shoving her hands in her coat pockets. She looks down while they walk, and then abruptly turns her eyes dead ahead.

"How are the boots?" she asks, neatly sidestepping Nile's own question. Nile will allow it, for the moment. Andy will not be able to evade her while they wait in the shop, after all. "I paid to have them thoroughly cleaned and fixed up, but I did not know if they would fit, or be comfortable, or any good after all this time."

Nile does a little skip to demonstrate. "They are perfect, Andy. No complaints, only gratitude. You didn't have to do this, for someone you barely know."

"Barely _knew_ , I think. We have bared our souls too much these past days to say we don’t know each other, would you not agree?"

"I could be persuaded."

Andy laughs again, a louder, better sound than before. She bumps Nile in the shoulder and knocks her off-balance with a sly grin, and they walk on in silence until reaching the bakery. Nile ducks into the butchers next door while Andy sorts out their baked goods, and they meet in the grocers to pick up a range of other foods afterwards. By mutual silent agreement they do not go immediately back into the library but walk past it towards the docks, finding a seat on the bank leading down the side of the building. It gives a partial view of the lake over the buildings that line the edge of the docks. It is a little too dark for Nile to see much, but the dim glint of town lights off the water offer interesting enough a view while they nibble the sweet slices of pastry Andy has bought them. She has a sweet tooth, Nile has learned today. It is a lovely humanising fact for an often austere and intimidating woman.

"I am alright," Andy says without preamble, when they finish their treat. She does not look at Nile, leaning back on her hands. The ground is damp underneath them but their coats protect the rest of their layers. It is cold and they will have to move soon, but the quiet company is pleasant. Nile wonders if it is easier for Andy to speak here - not quite face to face, and out in the open where the words can be carried away as soon as they are voiced. "Though I am not surprised you asked. I think, after all this business with the Church is done with and we can go back to normal, that normal might look a little different. I still do not like what part Sé- Booker played. I cannot be sure I will ever not think of that, a little, when I see him. But it has been a great many years, and I think you're right that this would be for Quỳnh, as much as for us. I don’t want to forget her, not a single detail or moment of memory, and really the only one that can help me there is Booker. If we want to change how we are we will need each other for it."

"I'm honestly… Impressed."

"We talked, after the photos. And appreciated you and Joe giving us some space, Nile. Thank you. But now that all that is done with, we should go and feed those boys I think. They will be starving by now."

They gather themselves up and turn towards the library. From the side they have been sitting on, Nile can see the emergency exit she had taken out with Booker to help Joe.

For some reason it appears to be open.

"Andy?" she says, eyeing it warily. "Tell me I'm being paranoid by worrying about that."

"About what? Oh."

They exchange a glance. Andy strides over quickly and gently pulls it open, peering inside. "Booker? Joe?" she calls, Nile right behind her. Everything seems fine, but there is no reply from either man. They creep forwards and Andy pulls out-

"Is that a gun?!" Nile hisses, flinching away from it nervously. It is not as though she has never seen one before - she grew up in America after all and even in Miskatonic there had been campus security who were rather well armed - but it still surprises her. Andy gives her a quick glance and a raised eyebrow and Nile settles, falling back into place. With the gun up they advance along the side of the library, and Andy calls out to the men again in a perfectly casual voice.

When they get to the end Andy murmurs, "Stay here," gun down but at the ready as she breaks off to scan through the stacks and the foyer. Nile ducks into the staff room to find Booker out cold on the chaise longue, unhurt but with two very ominous looking half-drunk mugs of tea on the coffee table. 

Joe is gone. Again. 

"Andy!" Nile screams, until Andy is there beside her, helping her to sit Booker up. His head lolls but his eyelids flutter, and he groans softly. He seems inebriated, rather than knocked out. Nile’s stomach shifts unpleasantly like the deck of a rocking ship.

"Booker? Wake up!" Andy shouts, slapping her hands against his shoulders, the gun thankfully placed back in its holster. He groans and his eyes peel open a bit, trying to focus on them. Nile clasps a hand over her mouth and tries to contain the anger and worry inside her chest, reaching forwards to dip her finger into the tea and taste it. Opium, distinct and disgusting and malevolent. "Look at me. Did Joe do this? Did he drug you? Or did you do it to yourself?"

"Andy!" Nile hisses reproachfully. "Look at him! Of course he didn't do it."

"Then either Joe did or there was someone else in here entirely. I'm not- I am just checking off the possibilities, Nile. Please do not interfere."

"I will if you make baseless, wild accusations. It might help you to know that we tossed every bottle of the stuff in the place! It could not have been either of them."

"Wasn't Joe," Booker slurs, and Nile can see the effort he is putting into staying conscious enough to speak. The dose must have been very high to taste so strongly in the tea, but they had not had much from the mugs and should throw off the effects quickly. Nile wants that to be true at least. She takes his hands and rubs the cold ends of his fingers to soothe them both. "Wasn't Joe, Andy."

"Alright Booker. Who was it?"

His eyes roll back and Nile cups his face, leaning past Andy to check his tongue and sigh. "He is out."

"And Joe is gone."

"Joe is gone."

They look at each other. "Nicky is going to be inconsolable," Andy mutters, sinking down onto the floor on her knees with a quiet groan.

* * *

"We have to go after them," Nile says, pacing around the staff room. _She will wear tracks in the already threadbare carpet like that_ , Andy thinks wearily. She feels every single one of her years in that moment, weighing on her bones. It would be so easy to sink down under it, reach for one of the cold mugs on the table and let the drug float her away on a wave of not-caring. "Who knows how long ago they took him? We need to _go_."

"Like I told Nicky before, we cannot simply run around town hoping to run into him. That is not how real life works."

"Last time you did not know he had been _taken_."

"Was he? Don’t look at me that way Nile, there is always a point to asking the worst questions. Was he taken or did he go off again, or did he leave of his own free will? It is possible with his condition."

"Woman, there was a woman," Booker forces out, swimming up above unconsciousness again. Nile grabs a mug filled with water and helps him sip at it, face drawn but clearing up nicely. "Blonde, professional. Probably the Doctor - she had the drugs."

Nile whirls to face Andy, desperation twisting up her usually calm and confident expression. "You heard him, the Doctor! How she knew he was here I don’t know, but if she took him they will be heading for the hospital. We need to _go_ Andy!"

"If she took him to the hospital then he is where he is supposed to be," Andy says slowly, hating that the words leave her mouth. They are out now though and she cannot stop them, so she leans into it. "His parents wanted him treated."

"He is a _grown man Andy_! He did not want this, does that not count for something?"

"Perhaps. But I cannot just go in and demand he be freed. It is a hospital, Nile. They have not kidnapped him. Well…" She reevaluates that, wincing. "I suppose they may have. Knocking Booker out was certainly uncalled for."

Nile stands up from Booker's side and squares her shoulders in front of her, meeting her gaze evenly with steely determination. _That's better_ , Andy thinks. "They didn't just knock him out, Andy. Whoever did this, the doctor, she tried to _frame him_. It is just good luck that we had already got rid of all the laudanum in the place! Because he is better than they wanted us to think." Booker gazes up at her with his heart in his eyes and Andy's sinks.

It is true, isn’t it. Whether or not it has to do with anything else - and her heart is howling, screaming that it absolutely does because people simply _do not behave like this_ \- a man has been kidnapped and someone has been framed. Criminal behaviour undoubtedly, perhaps even nefarious in nature. And certainly dubious enough to look into. Andy had been hired by Yusuf's parents to find him - so how did the doctor come to know where he was?

"Alright, very well, yes. You're quite right," Andy sighs, running her knuckles over the ever-deepening crease between her eyebrows. "Stay here with Booker, I will go talk to the doctor and see what I can do."

"Is that safe?"

"She is still a medical professional, Nile. And you are also entirely right that we should not waste any time. Besides, I'm a Detective." Nile gives her a skeptical blink but then subsides with a nod, looking back at Booker.

"Be safe. Bring him back quickly."

"Andy," Booker adds, weakly lifting a hand. He looks too miserable not to take it, and his fingers are just starting to warm up from Nile's ministrations. "Take care. The Doctor had friends, to carry Joe. Three men. Looked like dock-workers, all of them."

The effort of speaking seems to take it out of him and he slumps back, closing his eyes with a soft, pained hum. Andy does not quite squeeze his fingers in comfort but it is a near thing. Instead she just lingers a second longer than she needs to and hopes he understands her silent message.

Nile gives her one last glance, before Andy sweeps out of the room and the library, her trusty boots eating up the street beneath her as she marches on the hospital.

* * *

Elvagyodask Hospital is one of the most modern looking buildings in the town, which is not saying very much. Located halfway up the mountain, with the forest at its back on the northern edge of town, it boasts the same architecture as the Big House the al-Kaysanis live in. Tall towers and sharp turrets, with rounded corner towers that host spiralling staircases within; dark, dour stone walls and carefully leaded diamond-patterned windows. Four long buildings surround an inner courtyard and two of the town's only non-pedestrian transports - covered carriages for transporting patients - sit parked out on the street in front. It sprawls sideways on the incline of the mountainside, the bottom end and western wing extending almost an entire storey further down than the eastern one. The effect is of a looming, lopsided fortress crouching at the treeline. 

Andy is not impressed, glowering up at it, menacing it right back and imagining the whole structure cowering away like a frightened dog in the face of her determined anger.

There are a few nurses milling around in the reception foyer when she stalks in and over to the man behind the desk. He does not look up, no expression at all on his face when he tells her to “Wait, please,” and then continues scribbling over a file in front of him. He ignores Andy entirely for all of thirty seconds before she growls under her breath and slaps her badge down on the table in front of him, making him jump.

"I need to see the Doctor. Now," she tells him firmly. "Kozak, I believe. Where is she?"

"Doctor Kozak is ah, out on an errand at the moment, perhaps you'll be happy to leave a message?" the receptionist replies, glancing around nervously. Andy's face darkens and he rears back, holding the seat of his chair for dear life. Good, it is nice to see she has not lost her touch.

"Where did she go and when will she be back?"

"I could not possibly say-"

"Because you aren't supposed to or you do not know?"

"I- well both really, there were not many details and I would not dare question a _doctor_ when she-"

"That is quite alright, thank you," a new voice interrupts. It is smooth and calm and puts Andy's hackles up immediately, the conciliatory tone always an inevitable precursor to patronisation. "I am Doctor Meta Kozak, can I help you?"

"Andromache, Detective Andromache. We need to talk, Doctor."

"Oh, I am sorry to hear that. Would you like to come to my office? I have just been out on an outpatient visit. I would like to get out of my coat and have some dinner if possible, before the night shift starts." Kozak blinks perfectly neutrally under Andy's piercing gaze, not a single shift to indicate guilt. Which - much like when she had interrogated Nicolò - absolutely rings alarm bells in her head. Normal people are nervous when she asks to speak with them, especially if they are innocent. Guilty ones have reason to hide.

Andy inclines her head, figuring that at least in a more enclosed space she will have the chance to really dig some answers out of the doctor, and perhaps even the edge if the woman tries anything. "Lead the way, Doctor Kozak."

They walk through the hall and off to the right, up a large staircase onto the first floor. Andy takes the time to note down some details to herself internally: the Doctor has just come from outside, alone; she is showing no signs of being out of breath or wary; there were no others with her. Indicating of course, that Joe is not in the hospital. 

Andy avoids cursing out loud by a hair's breadth and just smiles tightly when Kozak turns to glance at her. Perhaps the crunch of her jaw grinding had been audible.

"Here we are," Kozak says eventually, pushing open the door to a simple office partway down the hall. She walks in first, no concern for any sort of propriety, and moves around behind the desk to untie her coat and hang it on the coat stand. "Would you like anything to drink?"

The memory of the mugs left innocuously on the table in front of poor Booker flashes before Andy's eyes. She stares at Kozak without a word until the doctor simply shrugs and sits down, clasping her hands loosely in front of her on the desk. "Please, feel free to sit down."

"I would rather stand, this will not be long."

"As you prefer," Kozak murmurs, meeting her eyes steadily. "What can I help you with?"

And they're off. 

"Where were you this afternoon? As much detail as you can, please."

"I completed my rounds after lunch, and then went out to take care of my patient in town."

"Which patient?"

Kozak shifts, chin dipping downwards. Her mouth does not move but Andy gets the distinct impression she is being chided. "Now, Detective Andromache, you must know I am not required to share information like that."

"Fine then, in which part of town?"

"Nor that, but I suppose I will be generous. You do look awfully worked up. Are you sure you would not like a drink or a seat?"

"Just- answer the question."

Kozak's eyes _glitter_. "Well I was up in the heights, on the other side of the upper church from here."

"Lofty Park?"

"Yes, that one."

"And can anyone _confirm_ that?" Andy demands. Because it is a bunch of nonsense, is what it is. "Did anyone see you at all?"

"Ah well," Kozak says slowly, and _yes_ , Andy thinks, _I have her_. Only the Doctor then straightens up again and smiles blandly. "Yes, I suppose. The priest who works in the church was outside when I passed. We exchanged a few quick words, and then went our separate ways."

What? "You exchanged words with a priest?" If Nicolò was her witness Andy was going to break something. It could not be true, it simply couldn’t. 

"I might be a woman of science, Detective, but I am also a native to the town. My religious principles are my own. But yes, I exchanged some words. I suppose you might have already heard, had you not cut yourself off from our community such a long time ago, that there is to be a rather important ceremony tomorrow?"

" _Tomorrow_ ?" Andy repeats breathlessly. Nicolò had said soon, she simply had not realised _how_ soon.

"A new ordained Father of the Church, and a few special rites, as well. It will bring about a fair amount of change for us all," Kozak says. Her voice has taken on an edge that Andy does not like one bit, and her mouth is lifted in a faint smile. "You as well, I imagine."

"What does that mean?"

Kozak searches her face for something she evidently does not find, tilting her head with a soft huff. "I suppose I am not entirely surprised that you are not in the know. You are not a local, even after all these years. Well, why should I not tell you, considering the circumstances…?" She trails off, tapping her fingers while Andy just stares at her, mind whirring. Then Kozak looks up again and blinks, smiling her small, eternally composed smile. "There sometimes comes a time when our town has to take certain steps to ensure certain things, and continued survival in this increasingly difficult world of ours is one of them. There is a place then, where fact and fiction meet, where science and what you might call magic intersect. I have done my research on that place, just as your man in the library used to, and have found nothing to contradict the things the Church has said, time and time again. But among all that there was another thing, another possibility I found. You see - or rather you _do not_ , because you are so deep into your drink that there is no light left to navigate by - there is some value in faith in the extraordinary, beyond the mundane. There is a positive outcome that cannot be explained by logic. And so we have learned and other people will learn to compromise, to sacrifice, in places like this. What is the value of one life after all, against so many others?"

Andy's stomach is somewhere between her feet on the floor. She is tense, muscles feeling like hard rock, and wonders at what point she should go for her gun. The Doctor is quite clearly mad, and this is undeniably the same madness that Booker has talked about and that they had been blindly searching for with Quỳnh before. Of course they had never found it - it hides in plain sight, behind utter normality. 

It lurks and lingers now behind Kozak's eyes and Andy steels herself to reply. "Why are you telling me this? What do you expect will happen?"

"Well, that rather depends on you, Detective. Would you like to see your young love again?"

" _What_."

"I believe her name was Quỳnh?"

Andy lunges across the desk with a howl, grabbing the doctor by her shirt and dragging her forwards. Her vision blurs from sheer overwhelming rage and her blood is hot as flames in her veins, throbbing around at a breakneck pace. Kozak gasps, but then grins and when the door bursts open and someone grabs her from behind Andy realises three things at once.

One; Kozak had pressed a panic button before she had even said Quỳnh's name.

Two; Kozak had been _planning_ this. Her words earlier before her terrifying monologue ( _or was it a sermon?_ ) suddenly take on a new meaning and a lot of awful sense.

Three; Nile is going to be so disappointed in her.

She thrashes and screams to get free, trying to reach for her gun, but the prick of a syringe in her neck steals daylight away and the world goes heart-stoppingly, despairingly _black. Joe, I’m so sorry_.

The last thing Andy hears before her hearing turns off along with her last lingering threads of consciousness, is Kozak's voice promising she will see Quỳnh again soon enough. Somehow, it is not the comfort Andy thinks the Doctor intended it to be.

* * *

_Right-left-right-left-right. Five long strides. Turn, push off, right-left-right-left-right. And again, back again, keep going. Right-left-right-left-right._

"Nile, can you…" Booker says quietly, closing his eyes and putting a hand to his forehead. Nile turns quickly, hurrying over to perch beside him on the chaise longue. "No, no I'm alright. But you are not, young lady."

"I can stop. Actually I cannot, I feel like I might just explode out of my own skin if they take any longer, Book, I cannot bear it! This is so very wrong - Andy would not need that much time to get there. Just a brisk walk away, you said!"

"The Doctor might not be there, or Andy might have to travel to get Joe. We cannot know what is happening, Nile, and imagining the worst will only make it feel like the world is ending around you. I should know."

Her face and hands twist in sympathy for a moment, and then keep twisting in worry, right back to it. He sighs to see her so out of sorts. "But imagining the best could mean we're losing valuable time, Book. You said it yourself - we cannot know what is happening. How long would it take for us to find out if something is truly wrong? How much danger could they be in in the meantime?! We know they took Joe - no one who does that does it for a good reason!"

"Nile, calm down-" Booker tries, but she has flown off the chaise to pace again.

"I think we need to get Nicky. He knows- he knows more than we do about the town. He might know what is happening, he might know if there is anything linking Joe and the Doctor and the Church stuff coming up. Where is he, anyway? He should know! We should tell him, Book, it isn’t fair that he has no earthly clue that Joe is gone!"

"We will!" Booker makes himself shout over her. She looks at him and he thinks, _oh, I have never shouted before._ "Nile, we will. I am sorry, I wish I could jump up and run with you. But Nicky will be coming to us soon, we cannot leave now. And Andy could be back any moment. There has to be someone here to meet them. If you- if you truly need to leave then I would not discourage it, but please wait to take Nicky with you?"

She sits heavily beside him after a moment of total stillness, and reaches out for his hand. He offers it freely, squeezing back when she holds it tightly between her own in her lap, bowing her head to contemplate it intently. "This whole situation… It has really taken a turn, hasn’t it. Just yesterday I felt such an excitement about solving the puzzle. I suppose I had not stopped to consider the real implications of all the pieces involved."

They share silence between them. Booker even dares to slip his hand free and wrap it around her in a loose hug, that she leans back into gratefully. "Book?" Her voice is smaller than he has ever heard it. "I'm scared. For Joe, and Andy too. And for us, a little. It was very easy to be brave when we were all here and working together on this. Now it feels as though there is some real evil that wants to defy us. But that is ridiculous, because such things do not exist! There cannot be a malevolent force outside of what humans create themselves."

He shifts to look at her. "And why not? I spent my time before coming here studying exactly that question. But even if the answer is simply madness, who is to say that madness itself does not count as an evil force? A malady of the soul, the spirit, the mind… We do not know an origin for such things. It could be that what we call demons and devils are simply the unseen hand that causes such disturbances of human nature."

"Booker, that is ridiculous."

"Is it? You honestly mean to tell me you cannot see how the two might be conflated, confused? You were a researcher at Miskatonic, were you not?"

"An administrative assistant," she admits with a slump of her shoulders. "I was working on some of my own research for when I get the chance to publish, yes, but primarily just recorded interviews with troubled visitors and filed them away. And every one of them claimed to be cursed or haunted, and yet _every one of them_ had some mundane explanation in their history that had mixed up their thoughts."

"So you think the same for Joe?"

"I suppose so!"

"And everyone else in the town, to share the same symptoms, would they not need to share the same source?"

"Madness is not magical, Booker!"

He smiles gently at her, a swell of fondness in his chest, warm and lovely. He pulls Nile in for a tight hug, resting his cheek on her braided hair. "I cannot presume to know," Booker says from there, quietly trying to soothe her frenetic energy so it can be channeled back into productive determination. "But I know we will find out together, and fight whatever it is that is behind this. Even if Andy and Joe do not return tonight, we will wait for Nicky and then we will do everything to bring them back. You have changed things so much, Nile - I see only more such changes in the near future. Perhaps you will change the town so much some of us may even be able to escape it."

"Do you really think so?" Nile wonders quietly, although Booker can see the wrinkle of her nose at his implication that they are somehow trapped by force from leaving the town. He is pleased she decides to leave that aside for the moment, and nods firmly.

"I do."

The library surrounds them with a now familiar closeness while they sit and the evening stretches on before them, Joe- and Andy-less. They do not eat, but Nile stirs and mutters about continuing to work while she can, drifting out of the staff room and into the study to rustle through papers. Booker can hear her, which soothes the little niggle of panic in his stomach at not having her in sight. It allows him to focus on shaking off the last of the effects of the opium, which primarily make him feel nauseous. He has to ignore Nile's calls to see if he is alright when he bolts down the length of the library to the bathroom at the very tail end.

Nile brings him some water and a bite to eat to settle his stomach, and she also brings Nicky, a little while later. From the drawn, ghostly look of the priest and the way his poor lip is being tortured by his teeth, hands tucked tightly in a cross over his chest, Nile has explained the situation to him. He meets Booker's eyes without much hope, a silent scream if ever Booker saw one, but helps him upright to stagger back to the chaise longue and collapse upon it again.

"Are we really supposed to just... Wait?" Nicky asks. Silent scream indeed - his voice rasps with it. "We cannot possibly leave them out there all night. Who knows what might happen to them?"

"All I can tell you is what I told Nile; leave if you want to search but one of us must stay here in case they return safely."

"And I suppose you mean you?" Nicolò mutters. Booker jolts back, surprised by the low undercurrent of anger in his voice. Nile glances between them uncertainly.

"It would make the most sense," she says carefully, but Nicky just flicks her a glare. "What's wrong, Nicky? We're on your side here. We want them back safely as much as you do."

"I understand that Joe does not mean to you what he means to me, but I would have at _least_ appreciated word that my beloved had gone _missing, several hours ago_. Were you not worried? Did you not think to try and follow after him?!"

"Booker was drugged, Nicky! And Andy went as quickly as she could, when we got back-"

Nicky stands up, apparently too irate to remain still. He takes up the path Nile had been pacing earlier and Booker presses his lips tightly together. "When you got back! You left them alone, undefended, when you knew Joe was in danger?"

"We did _not_ know that."

"And dithered long enough to let them get away, but not to decide to come and tell me!"

"Nicky stop!"

Booker is surprised to find his own voice raised. Nicky whips around to stare at him, equally shocked, but stays still when Booker gets up and moves towards him, wrapping his hands slowly around those broad, tense shoulders. "Stop. Believe me when I say I understand, but we have to think clearly now. I have to think clearly, and so do you, for Joe and Andy."

"I just-" Nicky looks at him as though he is a lifeboat on a foggy sea, come to bring him ashore. Booker has never once felt that way in his life and he both likes the trust and honour of it; and hates that they have been thrown into a situation that makes it necessary. "I have had a strange day. The service is tomorrow. Losing Joe now is not helping matters."

Well that does not sound promising. Booker guides the priest back to sit down and places himself close by his side, still holding one of his shoulders. "Tell us. It could be important."

* * *

Nicolò's day had begun well, continued mostly acceptably and ended with a series of bizarre incidents, culminating in arriving back at the library to find that Joe had been kidnapped and Andy was equally nowhere to be found.

He had, somewhere in his mind, known that his birthday this year would be a slightly different one. There was no special significance to his age, to turning thirty, not in the Church nor the town, but the conjunction of it with the late and sudden decision to ordain him had offered a certain ceremonial feel to the whole thing.

The change of his status within the Church might not practically affect very much, but it certainly made it _feel_ different. He had already accepted that he would feel guiltier about his relationship with Joe for example - though he certainly would not give it up, even if it was a somewhat doomed love from the start. A priest and a company heir were not meant to live and be happy together until the end of their days. At some point a more advantageous marriage would come to Yusuf and they would grow apart. Nicky knows that they would; his Joe would never be able to live with keeping an affair going while married. It is not in him to be so dishonest and selfish, with either partner. _If only it were_ , Nicky's heart sighs, but he knows he does not have it in him either.

When his sermon was as ready as it would ever be - just about the only thing he could make himself focus on that day - he placed it on the pulpit and silently mouthed through the words, getting used to them for the next day. Nicky could admit to a certain amount of nerves at the prospect of such a large, important audience for his service, but he was a professional, and he had time to practice.

He had thought.

"We come with gifts," the man who had visited him before had said as he marched inside after Nicolò had only made it through the first half a page, only pausing to whip off his hat. "From the other priests - something special to wear."

"Oh, goodness, I-" Nicolò had stammered. "I have never heard of-"

"They insist. But would you try it on, briefly, Brother? So that we are sure it will fit."

"I suppose I can do that." The man had nodded in satisfaction and handed over a bundle wrapped in paper, pressing Nicolò back into his office to change. The cassock was a heavy linen in a dark grey, the colour of the sky during a daytime storm, and the stole was silk in a black so dark it felt like ink. There were also, for some reason, a pair of matching gloves of purest white, that slid into place and fitted extraordinarily well over Nicolò's fingers, to his delight and bemusement. Incredible, the luck of it.

He had come back out in his normal dress again, and thanked the man, who moved away from standing behind the pulpit, probably to sneak a peek at the sermon. "Excellent. Wear that tomorrow, Brother. And know that everyone is very excited. We are all looking forward to a bit of cheer, very much. A bit of cheer and a bit of change around here."

"Well I am not sure how much I will be changing, but I suppose it will be a nice day of festivity, in a way."

"Quite so. My thanks for all your help, Mr…?"

"Keane, Brother. Mr. Keane, and keen I am to get on with the rest of my errands, so I will have to take my leave of you now, but will await tomorrow with eagerness. Say, did you manage to have any luck with Yusuf al-Kaysani at all?" he had asked, tipping his hat back on.

Nicolò had attempted to stay relaxed and simply shook his head. "What a pity," Keane had sighed, starting away down the aisle. "Well, perhaps he will show up anyway, in the end, as you are such good friends."

"I look forward to finding out," Nicky had agreed quietly, hoping desperately for Keane to leave and stop asking such probing questions. It was just as well Keane was facing away from him while he had walked to the exit, so Nicolò could not betray himself.

"As do I, Brother Nicolò," Keane had said with a smile from the doorway. "Until tomorrow then."

"Go with God," Nicky had thrown out almost too late, to Keane's faint reply, the door already swinging shut behind him.

It had almost immediately swung open again, his cousin returned for more idle conversation about the ceremony. She had kept him so distracted with conversation about the details of the itinerary, the names of all the other speakers and attendees, a discussion of his sermon, that he had only belatedly realised the hour for setting up the kitchen had already passed, and with it any final chances to rehearse for the next day. His text and clothes and notes he had swept into the parcel Keane had brought, but his cousin had stopped him from rushing.

"They're already well underway," she had promised, reassuring him, and indeed when they had stepped out into the evening the whole thing had been set up and was busily working without him. "Go home, sleep well for the last time as Brother Nicolò. It will be a long day tomorrow, and night to follow, I should think. Do you remember the ritual for before the service starts?"

"I do, I will not forget Sister, I promise that. You will next see me washed and wet behind the ears, ready to begin."

"Excellent. And with an empty stomach? Good. I would accompany you myself but I think I will no doubt be too busy for such diversions. I took my own turn at the beach today in advance. In fact, perhaps someone will be sent to aid you, in my place. They will meet you at your lodgings once the sun rises, will that be suitable?"

Something about the way she had not exactly _asked_ had made him blink, but her expression had been perfectly relaxed when he had looked over. "It would be better to meet me at the riverbank, I believe, Sister. I will no doubt spend the night restlessly. I shall run the risk of taking a walk in the early hours, I predict now."

"Very well, the riverbank it is, Brother," his cousin had agreed. With a gentle press of her palm to his arm she had departed then, and he had hurried off to the library, looking forward to the comfort and relief of Joe's arms and unaware he would find the exact opposite awaiting him.

* * *

Nile whistles low and slow. "Well that certainly does not sound as though it is _not_ something to be worried about? What is that ritual, Nicky?" He rolls his eyes.

"Simply washing in the lake, near the source. Nothing magical about it, only a sort of clarification of the skin, and a humbling in the cold, sated by the habits we wear. I suppose there is some element of gratitude to the lake for providing the town with our living, but there are no incantations or pagan rites like you might be imagining."

"Alright, you could stand to be a little less snide, I think we understand," Nile sighs. Nicky purses his lips but tilts his head. "Booker? What is that look for?"

Booker is sitting bolt upright, a distant look in his eyes that implies he is probably mentally rifling through all the little pieces of information he has stored away in his memory. "Did you say Keane?"

"I did?"

"I think Keane was with the men that took Joe. The Doctor - she said that. I did not realise it was a name, everything was so hazy, but she did! She definitely did."

"You think it’s the same man?" Nile asked, breathlessly.

"How could it not be, in a town as small as this?" Booker scoffs. "Besides, Andy might have been a little out of sorts but she was right when she spoke of coincidences. There are simply too many to discount as pure chance. It cannot be anything but connected."

"Oh, goodness…" Nicky whispers, clutching the arm of the chaise longue for support. "And he was talking about going to run errands… And Joe- Joe! He said, oh, what did he say exactly... He said something about the possibility of Joe being at the ceremony tomorrow!"

Nile jumps up, Nicky with her and Booker rises, but his eyes have gone distant again. "And after that, the rest of the ritual. You wash, and you don't eat?"

"I, well it is just for this occasion."

"For the ordination?"

"For the- yes, that."

"Have you ever had to do it before?"

"What has this to do with Joe?!"

Booker clutches his arms tightly and pulls an alarmed Nicky closer, intent on his answers. Nile could not intervene if she wanted to - he is full of certainty and she is captivated by it. "Answer me, Nicolò. Have you ever had to do this ritual before, the not eating and the washing?"

"Well, no, not me. The last time it happened I was too young, although I went with my family to the riverbank."

"And there have been no such ordinations since?"

"I- well yes, but-"

"But no ritual. And let me guess, this happened when you were what, ten years old?"

" _Yes_ ," Nicolò breathes, eyes wide. "Twenty years ago."

Nile touches her fingertips to her mouth. _It’s real. All of it, whether magical or not - they are not imagining conspiracies or chasing ghosts. Joe has been taken and the church is about to embark on something horrid and Andy has almost certainly walked straight into the mouth of the lion._

Booker lets go of Nicky, leaving him to fall heavily onto the chaise longue while he races off into the study. Papers are being flung every which way when Nile stops in the doorway, until Booker grabs one with a triumphant laugh, flicking the paper with his fingernail. The noise it makes is a loud crack, and she jumps, keyed up and on edge. _Rightfully so_ , she thinks privately. 

"You see Nile?" he crows, bringing the paper to her. "Right here. ‘ _Priests, more than ever, and all of them damp as though they have been out in the rain. But no rain. Gaunt looking, hungry like the rest of the town, but there is food left over at the end of the day to be thrown to the street and scavenged over by people less fortunate than ourselves’._ Do you know what, I was still not entirely sure that we really were looking at what I sensed we were, but there is nothing but proof for us now. Who needs the source I wanted last time - we have Nicky, and our own memories to steer us right."

"We have to save them, Book," Nile says faintly. She shakes herself and injects some false bravado into her voice, hoping hearing herself speaking in such a way will convince her knees to get on board. "Joe and Andy. And anyone else who might be in harm's way - we have to save them. How do we do that?"

"We cannot."

Nile spins on her heel and stares at Nicky, behind her. He is walking, ever so slowly, from the staff room towards the windows. She exchanges a quick glance with Booker and then takes off after their despondent priest, gripping his wrist and turning him around. "Why would you say such a thing?"

"Because it is true. It was not possible last time, why would it be possible now? I have thought about it, you know. Why I was sent to Joe, like you asked. It was for this all along, was it not? I simply was never supposed to come to care for him the way I do. I suppose if I had not, I would be preparing h- _preparing him_ for whatever is to come to pass tomorrow along with Keane and the others, right now. And I cannot help but wonder, if they knew the moment he came to me and we left for the Inn. If they followed me here…"

"Oh, Nicky," Nile says, because she has no words of reassurance. It is awfully possible. They could have been watching, waiting for the right moment. And then she and Andy had offered them that moment on a silver platter, ever so kindly. "That has no bearing on our ability to stop this."

"They tried, Nile," Nicky tells her, and now he is being the gentle one, already letting grief and melancholy set into the lines on his tired face. He wears it uncommonly well in the strong angles of his cheekbones and heavy on his brow, like a classic painting of a tragic figure. _Maybe so,_ Nile thinks fiercely, _he wears love better, though._ His eyes flick up, past her, and she knows Booker is standing there. She can picture the expression on his face as easily as breathing, because it is one she has seen time and time again since she had first stepped into the library. "There was no way to win."

"There must be something,” Nile argues desperately. “There must be. Things… Cannot be hopeless." 

It feels unfair. In stories, in fairytales and myths and folklore there is always a solution, a way around the curse or a trick against the spell. But Elvagyodask is not haunted, nor enchanted. It is simply a town, isolated from the world and turned very much inward, a breeding ground for strange and unforgivable thoughts. How can anyone go so far from the light as to believe an innocent's death is the next logical step? What do they even have to gain from murder? 

"Do we know that they'll kill him?" she asks softly, casting about for any measure of hope.

Booker clears his throat. When she looks his way he is leaning heavily on the end of the first stack, rubbing his face. "Quỳnh did not survive whatever it was that happened, Nile, whether or not that was some kind of cult activity or an accident or who knows what. And Andy was a detective. _Is_ a detective. She investigated, she went to Quỳnh's family, to anyone she could, and she found only cold shoulders and denial. Quỳnh's things arrived on her doorstep a month later, that is how she had those boots of yours. I only know because she thought _I_ had done it and made sure to share her feelings on the matter, once she had moved on from believing it to be a message first from Quỳnh, and then her murderers. She is right though - that no sign at all is just as glaring a sign as fingerprints and corpses, in the end. And she is right that Quỳnh… I cannot believe I suggested she would have had an accident.

"It is not wrong to hope that her disappearance was unconnected but we know Joe's is not. And in all my years of experience with cults and religious fanaticism - don’t look at me that way Nicky, you know it fits - I have never heard of rituals like this _not_ involving any kind of morbid element."

"So what do we _do_ , Book?" Nile begs him, reaching back to take Nicky's hand and squeeze it. Booker looks between them both and shifts his weight from side to side, and then blinks.

He blinks again. Nile's heart is in her throat, fingers tight enough on Nicky's to hurt. His are the same, hand clammy and clinging back.

Booker lifts a finger, waving it faster and faster and then he darts off back to the study. Nile and Nicky are only inches behind him, crashing into each other in the doorway in their effort to get through at the same time. "We have to consider what we have this time that we did not twenty years ago. Trying the same - falling into books and research - without changing anything is the fool's route, and the madman's too, to expect any result other than the same one. But this time we have a new weapon. We have Nicky."

"Me? I cannot fight!"

"No but you can go where we could not. Last time our biggest challenge was finding out any information that the church did not want us to know. This time you have all the details we need - where it is, when it is. You know _who_ it is, and you can go there with them none the wiser."

"They must know I am aware of things by now!" Nicky protests, but Booker shrugs.

"So? They still need you. It stands to reason - they have put an awful lot of effort into you, preparing and pressuring you to do the right things the right way. The only thing they never planned for was you to fall in love with Joe. They could not have predicted it, but you have not acted one bit out of character even so. Perhaps they believe you genuinely ignorant of the situation, or perhaps they do not care either way. Perhaps they believe you too devout to let such a thing as a boy-friend get in the way of your duty to the Church and the town."

"He is not my _boy-friend_ ," Nicky hisses, bristling like a cat. It almost makes Nile laugh, that little moment of normality and levity among all the madness. He glances at her grin curiously and she shrugs helplessly, squeezing the hand she still holds.

"I'm sure. But whatever the case - they want you to go to the riverbank tomorrow and they are invested enough in your participation that they have ensured an escort to keep you on track. Regardless of whether or not they already know you came here, it is a good thing you avoided the question altogether. You can maintain deniability."

Nicky puffs up proudly. "I am not quite that easily fooled," he says, starting to grin as well. It is infectious, from Nile to Nicky and then on to Booker, who leans on the desk and looks up at them.

"No, you are a surprise to them all, no doubt. So we have our way in, and our source of information. That means we can make a plan. Andy and Joe will need our help, and we might… We might have to take more than a few risks to ensure their safety. You will be going directly against not only your Church but people you have known for years, Nicky." Nicky looks down at his feet, frowning hard, and Booker goes on. "For my part I am willing to do whatever it takes. No one left behind. Not this time."

"No one left behind," Nile agrees.

They look at Nicky. Nile does not like the idea of pressuring him, but she crosses the fingers of her free hand behind her back anyway.

He looks up at them with calm determination.

"What do you need to know?" Nicky says.

Booker sits down in his desk chair. Nile thinks he looks like a King that has found his throne again, hands spread wide over the tabletop. "It is going to be a long night, my young friends. But by God, we will make sure it is worth it. For Joe, and Andy."

"And for Quỳnh," Nile adds softly. Booker smiles.

"And for Quỳnh."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _This is a reminder to have a break if you haven't already! Food, water, a nice stretch, or even some sleep - now is the time!_ :)


	8. Above and below

_I_ _t is coming it is rising they are rising can they be quicker rise sooner refuse to let it win?_

_Clawing up and up against the thrashing clawing keeping weight of the dark and wet and hungry greedy miserableterriblethingitwillneverbesatedneverbesatisfied-_

_Pushing on and on and on and up and up and up to help to shout to scream hoarse save me save them save yourselves!_

_Where is the light? There._

_Faster-_

* * *

Andy wakes up with a sharp inhale of air, choking and coughing at the sour taste in the back of her throat. She shakes her head, slowly levers her body upwards on shaking arms, and tries to wrestle her mind into cooperation, to register where she is and what is nearby. Her slow, squinting blinks reveal a small room with a rickety wooden floor, circular walls, and the sound of lapping waves outside the grimy window, implying they are very close to the lake. _The lighthouse_. She finishes turning her head, using the stone wall at her back to sit upright, and sees a slumped figure not far away, facing away from her. 

When she leans over to the figure and shakes them by the shoulder, she is dismayed but not surprised to see Joe's face roll over towards her, equally as bleary and confused as hers. He must have been drugged again not too long ago, hopefully after making a total nuisance of himself. 

_Getting an adult-sized man through the streets would have been difficult even unconscious_ , Andy thinks. _They must have had very few worries that anyone would say anything about the sight._

"Detective?" Joe croaks, trying to get his elbows under him and failing repeatedly. Andy replies with a wan smile and reaches out to help shuffle him back against the wall, propping him up and falling back beside him, both of them exhausted by the effort. "What happened? I don't-" His breath hitches and his head hangs but his wild eyes and quick breaths are clear as day. Andy wonders if anyone has ever seemed more fearful. " _Andy_ -"

"It's alright, Joe," Andy promises, wincing with regret as soon as the words pass her lips. She despises false optimism, even if it feels like the right thing to offer him. He clings to it nonetheless and shudders. "They know where I went, that you went missing. Nile is liable to stage a one-person hunt of the town and get us back before noon, I will bet."

"You called me Joe," he notes, picking up the thread of her levity with ease, ever a positive creature. Bizarre, for an artist, but considering the darkness incumbent in the rest of his life she does not begrudge him it one bit. "Andy," he whispers, more seriously. Her stomach tightens in preparation. "Andy there are voices in my head. Faces in the air. My fingers are not my own."

"Fuck," she rasps, rolling her head sideways to look at him. He grimaces and breathes out very carefully. "Can you control it? Are you going to… Forget?"

"I don't know. It has never been like this before. I know it is happening, for one thing, and for another it has definitely never been this strong. Andy I… Is it alright if I say I am a little frightened?"

"Oh, Joe, of course it is. But try and push through it, yes?" She nudges her arm out enough to knock his. "At least there is no paper around to go wild on."

That is the wrong thing to say. Joe whimpers and with renewed energy his hands fly up to clutch his hair, knees drawing into his chest for him to bow over. "The walls are too bare, the walls need to not be, Andy. Who needs paper when I have my nails- _oh please no leave me alone make it stop_."

The dread is ice cold in Andy's veins, but it serves to chase out the lingering drugs in her system. She finds she can sit upright without help and reaches for those trembling hands, squeezing them tight and not wincing when his grip in return is vise-like, turning her fingers white. "Listen to me Joe, we will get out of here."

"I want to go back to the library! It was quiet there, it was _quiet_ -"

"Joe! Focus, listen! Nile and Booker will come. Nicky will come. You cannot think he would leave you here, if he could help it?"

"Nicky?" Joe whispers, eyes clearing a little. "Where is Nicky?"

"He is coming, Joe. If I know the two of you at all-" _and I do, and you are so much the same and so different than Quỳnh and I,_ "-then he will be here soon. He would not leave you."

"Nicky is coming. He loves me."

"He does," Andy says, fighting the lump in her throat. "He does, so much. How could the universe divide such a love?"

The room disappears, her eyelids squeezing shut. She feels Joe's hold relax a little but doesn't let go, not even when he sighs in relief. How could the universe do such a thing, after all? It makes so little sense - it never once has. For years she has turned it this way and that in her mind, and for years she has found no single answer to the question. Why her? Why Quỳnh? Why them? Out of all the people in the town, in the country, in the whole godforsaken world; _why them_.

It was not as though Andy had been particularly devout to begin with, but after Quỳnh, her combined anger at the Church and the lack of divine intervention had certainly not helped her relationship with any omnipotent figures up above. How Nicolò can believe in that mess, she will never understand.

 _Perhaps_ , she thinks, a petty and vindictive thing, _he will not after all this is said and done, whatever way it ends_. Andy would never wish for Joe to be harmed for the sake of her own petty revenge on one unfortunate priest, for the sake of his representing the institution she loathes... But she does want to shake him hard until he understands. Hold his face towards reality until his eyes water from the blinding truth and he finally sees it.

And then, belatedly but all at once as though it had simply been waiting patiently just nearby, the memory of what Kozak had said floods back.

_"Would you like to see your young love again?"_

_"I believe her name was Quỳnh?"_

Andy gasps silently, eyes flying open, her leg kicking out and hands flailing free of Joe’s as she feels the distinct sensation of falling and tries to catch herself. In front of her eyes the lighthouse wall is just as it had been before, if a little lighter, dawn starting to tentatively bleed through the two high windows. Joe looks at her, and then evidently decides to leave her alone when she turns her face decisively away, biting her lip hard. How had Kozak known?

It proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Quỳnh had not been an accident.

And yet, there was none of the catharsis Andy had always craved. Why not? Why was knowing for sure not enough all of a sudden? Why did the howling storm of emptiness (Quỳnh-shaped, always) not fill and abate and dissipate? Why did she still ache and rage and roil with fury?

_"Would you like to see your young love again?"_

"Impossible," Andy whispers under her breath, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth. It shakes. It is impossible, ludicrous. Kozak had been lying, had lied no doubt about seeing Nicky, and was certainly lying about this. A madwoman, like the others, who believed in rituals and sacrifices and exchanging people like bargaining chips for some imaginary gift in return. What had they gained last time - wealth? Power of some kind? _No, think back_ \- what had been different afterwards? The only thing Andy can think of is that the town and industry had bounced back just a little as fish returned to the lake, though not in numbers enough to make much more difference than a bandage on an open wound. Did the Church truly, genuinely believe that sacrificing Quỳnh had been what achieved that meagre change in fortune?

How could killing an innocent ensure that happened? How could it ever have been considered _worth_ it?

Her thoughts continue to chase each other round and round, while Joe slumps down and his breathing evens out in uneasy sleep beside her. Andy can hardly imagine doing the same, trying to match the pieces together, adding up four and blue to make square. That is how it feels at least, trying to follow the crazed logic of Kozak and all the other believers - the entire Church, perhaps even the entire town.

She hopes not.

It becomes too much eventually, the agitation in her limbs outweighing the last of the effects of the drug. The day is dimly lit outside, well and truly begun and entirely unwelcome. She finds herself able to stand, and crosses to the window, peering up out of it and looking out at the lake. 

What do they believe the lake holds, or is, to decide to sacrifice to it? Is it simply the madness of the isolated, as Booker had once posited? Turning dependent on something and fabricating supernatural abilities, creating superstitious rituals and traditions simply in order to feel as though there were some control to be had over such a temperamental natural force?

"What are you?" she asks it quietly. 

"A grave, my love. Or not a grave but a coffin, a prison where I lie, dreaming and dreaming. Guarded jealously by greed."

Andy smiles, until she freezes. Hearing Quỳnh's words in her mind is hardly a new, shocking thing.

Hearing her words in _Joe's voice_ is entirely different.

She spins around so quickly she overbalances, two quick steps taking her to his side where she drops down heavily on her knees and searches his face. His eyes peel open slowly, the same warm brown as ever, darker in the dim room. "What did you say?"

"Whatever its name once was it is lost by now," he sighs, shrugging a shoulder. The movement does not fit him quite right, made for a smaller frame with sharper bones. It should be accompanied by a toss of the head, a flick of long hair out of an unimpressed face. Joe's lips curl into the right smile but the beard obscures it.

Andy reaches out, hands trembling, to cup his cheeks. "Joe? Are you awake? Do you know what you're saying right now?"

"Dreaming and dreaming, my love," he says, reaching up to curl his fingers around her wrist. "We reached the light."

"Yes, this is the lighthouse."

"No, we reached the light. I can see again. My eyes are open, your face fills my vision. My tongue is heavier than before but it moves as I will it. And I will it to say how much I have missed you, my love. Andromache."

"Joe?"

Joe casts her a distinctly unimpressed look, another one she knows. It has been twenty years to the day since last she saw it, and yet she knows it immediately. Funny how the memory can work. Perhaps Quỳnh has been more alive in her mind that she had thought. "The artist sleeps. He always sleeps, and he lets me in. I was never sure what was happening before, too confused, too tired, too far away. But he is close, you are so close, and I have become less weighed down by the water than before. Floating up. I am close as well. Have you come to find me?"

" _Quỳnh_?!" Andy begs, waiting for the exasperated sigh she knows will - and does - follow, before throwing herself forwards and gathering Quỳnh to her chest. It feels different, to hug Joe's shape while expecting a smaller one, but she cannot stop. It is all so impossible, but doctors believe in rituals and lakes generate resources on command and Quỳnh's words are coming straight from Joe's lips - not something that could ever be falsified. She thinks of his paintings, his episodes, his fears and complaints and experiences. She thinks of Quỳnh, of twenty years, and she thinks that perhaps having a little faith might go a long way, after all.

Quỳnh lifts Joe's arms, and hugs her back.

* * *

Dawn is breaking shyly over the tops of the forest and peeking into the library when Nile lays out everything they have and starts from the top. There is not much but their planning had been as quick as possible, relying on their educated guesses, filling in the gaps between the pieces of the puzzle they are in possession of. Nicky will go to the service, he will play the part of the devoted priest and listen until he knows where their friends are being held. Their guess - if only they knew for sure - is that the sacrifice will take place later on, during the evening celebration after the ceremony. There should be time for Nicky to slip away after his ordination to share what he knows, and in the meantime Booker and Nile can scour the most likely places in town while all the Church is distracted by the service. It is a simple plan. Nile hopes it will work. 

Nicky yawns and rubs his eyes for the tenth time in the last couple of minutes. Nile hesitates, glancing at Booker and wondering if they really need to go over it again. It might do more harm than good to add a final (or final final _final_ ) clarification, when they will be heavily reliant on their key player actually being awake enough to play his part. They have managed to catch a few hours each in the darkest part of the night and had awoken to Booker insisting they prepare before Nicolò needs to depart - which is now imminent, approaching threateningly on the first rays of the sun.

"Alright Book, I put my foot down. Nicky needs to have breakfast and then he can go."

"I was not supposed to eat-"

"Yes and we agreed _several times_ that as the whole point is to ruin this thing, you would keep your strength up instead. In case you need to use any kind of physical force." She glares at him until he gives in, moving to the kitchenette to find some food. Then she glares at Booker until he stops looking mutinous and instead looks cowed. "We have to make this work, Book, we cannot risk anything."

"I know, Nile, it’s only that-" he sighs.

"I know, too," Nile tells him gently, reaching out across the coffee table to squeeze his hand. "We can do this. But we have to strike the balance between taking enough of a risk and too much and being reckless. That will be hard enough to do with the three of us split and separated, and I hate to have to wait idly by. Are we truly sure we cannot meet Nicky sooner than we have planned?"

The librarian and leader of their plotting shakes his head wearily. "There would be too much danger of things going awry, and someone finding out the deception. The Church has never been thwarted before, to our knowledge. We do not know what they already know, what preparations they have made to ensure it all goes smoothly."

He is not wrong, and Nile has argued herself into the same opinion tonight several times over, but it is still warring with the need to join Nicolò among the lions he will walk amongst far too soon. It just feels so wrong to let him go alone, while they wait. Their plan is pinned on the hope that no one suspects him of having the gall to deceive them, and that he will be able to get through the hours of the service without revealing himself. And if he does - that he can escape.

"Nicky, are you very sure that we will be in time to meet you if we arrive at the church just after four?"

"Certain, and if not then something has gone more wrong than we could have ever planned for," he agrees, wandering back in with a handful of cheese and nuts, shoving them all swiftly into his mouth and chewing quickly, clearly desperate to get underway. "But first, I must go to the beach to meet with my…" his nose wrinkles, " _escort_. I will do everything in my power not to fail you." _Or them,_ is implied in the clench of his jaw and set of his brow, firm and determined.

Nicky does not linger after that, eyeing the lightening sky and giving them both a quick, "Until later" before hurrying off. Nile wishes she had insisted on a hug, but had inwardly understood - and agreed - that such a goodbye would have felt morbidly final, and certainly would not be conducive to maintaining their calm, prepared states. Or rather; the calm, prepared states they are aspiring to.

"Come, Nile, you ought to sleep. Take the chaise longue, I insist," Booker tells her, guiding her by the shoulders away from the door and over to it. "There is time to spare before our search begins."

"Out of the two of us, who has been recently drugged?" Nile tries to argue, but Booker just shakes his head, facing her head on.

"And am I not the expert on functioning after such things?" he points out, gently but firmly. Nile lets him sit her down and bring out the blankets, stealing one for himself. "Sleep. I will wake you, and we will go and save them. There is nothing more that can be done now that the plan is underway."

The silence lingers, but she is unable to fall asleep right away. Booker gazes into space, lost in remembering, and Nile squeezes her eyes shut but cannot turn off her mind, wheels turning over and over as she repeats the plan in her head. The faces of Andy and Joe, and Quỳnh's shadowed shape, pop up again and again, faster and faster, then begin to be mixed in with Booker's, Nicky's… _Her mother and brother's_. It is only when something dark and menacing, awfully reminiscent of the strange, grasping shape of Joe's art, reaches out and starts to drag them all down, far away where she cannot reach - that she bolts upright with a gasp and realises she had been dreaming. Booker casts her a look from the kitchenette, silently finishing preparing them both a mug of strong tea. He does not say a word, but nor does he particularly have to. They are equally unsettled and far from ready to take on a town of crazed cultists.

But they will have to nonetheless.

* * *

"Quỳnh!" Andy gasps, for what feels like the first time all over again. Quỳnh just holds her, cradling her desperately weeping body close, kneeling together on the floor, and stroking her cheek with Joe's art-calloused fingers. "How can this possibly be?"

"Perhaps the world simply decided that you and I were too fated to be parted forever."

"It kept you here for me," Andy whispers, reverent. She lifts her head to gaze up, and it is Joe's face but Quỳnh is there, right there and Andy can _see her_. Can feel her in every way, senses alive with her presence. She hopes Joe will forgive her for the liberties she is taking, but his romantic side would no doubt encourage this reunion a million times over. "How long…"

"Will I remain?" Quỳnh guesses, when Andy's voice refuses to breathe life to the question for fear of the answer. Andy nods. "I cannot be sure," Quỳnh replies, threading their fingers together and looking at them. The sight of their hands must not match what she had expected or hoped to see because she wrinkles her nose and goes back to staring at Andy's face instead. "When he wakes I will go back below."

"Below where?" Andy demands breathlessly. "Are you a spirit? Or are you trapped somewhere, physically? Have they kept you caged?"

"Yes. I have a cage of weeds and a prison of water. And the light is always there, always far away and unreachable and beautiful, because you are where the light is. Life is where the light is. But I cannot reach it. Only it is closer than before now, and the weeds are moving and other _things_ are moving, and I feel it pushing me up and reaching out, for the artist and for the town and for you. Andromache, my Andromache, you must make it stop make it stop you must stop it must _stop_ -"

Andy hushes her, as reassuring as she can be while a pang of grief spikes through her so fiercely it feels as though she has been stabbed. The rambling, unhinged reply feels like no answer at all. Whatever Quỳnh is, she does not sound or seem entirely sane anymore, lost to whatever strange madness would befall someone under her circumstances. Perhaps this is the source of the madness that afflicts Joe, or perhaps they are separate and only influence each other. There are too many ways a person can be twisted and believe the world to be different to how it is, in this town. Joe, Kozak, Nicky with his religion, Quỳnh… It had often felt as though she, Booker and Quỳnh were the only ones with their eyes truly open, back then. Now it feels almost the same, albeit Quỳnh has crossed the divide and Nile has stepped up to take her place.

Perhaps she is judging Nicky and Joe a little too harshly, considering their recent efforts, but cynical is as cynical does and Andy is a worshipper of that altar alone out of all the myriad strange possibilities on offer.

"Andromache please. You are in danger. I cannot- my mind overtakes my mouth these days, I am so unused to talking to thinking to-" Quỳnh cuts herself off and lifts a hand to her face, wincing when her fingers startle to touch the curls of a beard where they expect to hit smooth skin. "You are in danger. All of you. If you can stop it, then you must - if you cannot then you should _run_."

"The others will do what they can. I hope they figure it all out. By now Nicky should be with them, they will find a way to get us out of here. But Quỳnh, concentrate now. Are you being held somewhere, somewhere that I could come and find you? Or may we only talk like this, through Joe's dreams?"

Quỳnh gives her a pitying look and transfers her hand back to Andy's cheek, apparently deeming the sight of Joe's hand there a price worth the touch of Andy's skin. "I am somewhere, but you will not be able to come. I am below the lake, Sheriff. Will you fight the water until it parts to allow you to march down to me?"

"The lake? That is impossible, then I'm talking to a corpse."

"Andy," Quỳnh snaps, still as quick-tempered as ever. "I am no corpse. I am here, real as day, are we not talking?"

Andy's mind takes a good hard look at the situation. Then it balks and she yanks her hands back. "Are we? Joe could- _cannot_ be doing this but how can you be real when you say you're dead? How can he be channeling you, your spirit or whatever you claim to be?! This is- oh, perhaps this cursed place has finally sent _me_ mad, once and for all, after all these years begging for a release from sanity!"

"Andy, stop this. Stop being short-sighted because you are too concerned with logic and rules. They do not _work_ here."

"But you're _dead_ ," Andy says, for the first time in two decades of hardly daring to hope but refusing to believe it. "How can you not be?"

"How can a sacrifice save a town from starvation?" Quỳnh replies tartly. "Think differently, Andromache. Believe in fairytales, or ghost stories, if you must. And then _do something_."

Andy moves her hands up to cover her face for a moment. Only a moment.

When she looks up Joe's eyes are closed, sleep heavy on his face. Quỳnh is gone.

* * *

In the past twenty years Booker can count on one hand the times he had felt protective. He has felt fearful, guilty, nauseous, furious, despairing, manic and all manner of things in between. He has been detached enough from every other human in the town to forget that such a feeling even _could_ exist. Even when thinking of Quỳnh… Well he had tried very hard for very long _not_ to think of her, hadn't he. From alcohol to obsession to the sweet embrace of opiates, and down into the depths of depression. The guilt had overwhelmed everything else even when he could not smother her memory - protectiveness was a thing of the past, out of place when the danger had come and gone and emerged victorious. There was only resignation left.

But now, with Nile bleary-eyed and already looking determined despite her unsteady hands, the feeling rears its ancient head and digs claws into the soft of his stomach, hauling itself up like a climber up a rock, bit by bit until it can take up residence in his throat and whisper into his ear.

He watches her finish her tea and wipe her palms on her trousers, watches her settle her own nerves with an ease and strength of will that defies and mystifies and amazes him all in equal measure. Booker takes what heart he can from that sight - that there is hope for him to regain or foster such strength again someday ( _if they survive_ , his fear whispers), and that Nile is not defenseless. Far from it.

"Book, it's nearly time. Noon is not far away," she says when she meets his eyes. He nods silently, the certainty of speech from last night strangled away by the protectiveness and its tight grip on his throat. "Are you alright? I know it will not be easy, but if you… If there was another way… Or something different for you to do-?" Nile cuts herself off and gives him a wan smile when she sees his expression. Booker does not know exactly what his face is doing but he feels the rush of affection must be clear upon it. Her reaction only increases the potency of his fondness tenfold; she stands up and over to him and offers her hand to help him up with a smile. "I should give you more credit. That is my mistake."

Booker allows himself to be drawn upright from the chair and pulls Nile into a hug, pouring all of his gratitude and concern and determination and pride into it, trying to offer a modicum of support for _her_ to lean into, for once. "You have always given me credit, Miss Freeman," he murmurs, croaks really, trying not to feel too overwhelmed with emotion. This is not a goodbye - it absolutely cannot be - but it feels like an ending nonetheless.

"Book. Really. Last naming me, now?" Nile laughs, though it has a distinctly wet edge to it and she doesn't move away from the embrace. He just smiles, and knows that she knows he is doing so.

Nile, as always, is the one to take the first step to move them onwards. She leans back and squeezes his arm once with a fleeting smile, before turning to gather her things. They are both weaponless without Andy and her gun, but their plan hinges on being quiet and stealthy and simply avoiding confrontation where possible, outwitting and outrunning their foe. They ought to have the full length of the service to begin their search of likely locations, starting with the hospital.

The library seems smaller than usual when Booker slowly leaves it behind. First; the room that had been his shelter, his hideaway. Neat and tidy and full of the lingering presence of friends. Then the main space; no longer dark and shadowed and chill, but ringing with the echo of voices and work done well. He detours to the study to pick up a few of Quỳnh's photos and stores them in his shirt pocket over his heart, giving in to the selfish need to have something sentimental with him when he- if he-

If anything happens.

Nile is lingering at the reception desk when he emerges, looking thoughtful. "Do you think…" she begins when he joins her, nodding at the foyer through the open library doors. "Do you think whatever-his-name-was Merrick would mind terribly if we availed ourselves of some of his collection?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well," she says, a grin playing around her mouth. "I know we planned not to have to fight, but there is a very pretty knife in one of the back cases. It might be decorative but something sharp is something sharp, I think. And it isn't the only one."

"You mean…" Booker raises an eyebrow. Nile nods. She looks a little abashed though, as though he might possibly scold her for wanting to carry a blade into a dangerous situation. While he finds it difficult to want to encourage her to violence, the protectiveness is just as adamant that - if Nile is sure - she should absolutely be armed. "I don’t see why not. There is no key to the cases however."

"Oh Book, we're already engaging in some petty theft, in order to go and undertake a very illicit counter-attack against a genuine fanatic cult. Are you going to let something as small as a missing key stop us?"

"… We could just smash the glass."

"That's the spirit!" Nile cries, darting off and returning with the typewriter. She shrugs at his open-mouthed silent surprise, and then marches up to the case she wants and hurls the type-writer at it. It impacts with a glorious, grand crash, keys and shards of glass erupting into a symphony of destruction. He laughs, he cannot help himself, and Nile is equally as wild with glee ( _and not a little adrenaline_ , Booker reckons) when she delicately plucks the two daggers out of their long-time home. They are fairly decorative as she had said - blades and handles totaling about the length of his forearm. Both are made of the same green stone as the library, funnily enough, carved into simple, grippable hilts that fit nicely into both of their hands.

"Be careful not to cut yourself," Booker says, more to himself than Nile as he promptly fumbles the blade when trying to tuck it in between his coat and shirt sleeves. She snorts, but does not begrudge him the words.

It feels a little as though there should be more pomp to their exit thereafter, but the side door of the building swings shut behind them just as it always has, and the day that greets them outside is no different to usual. 

Elvagyodask is quiet, still as stone when they slip in among its streets and buildings. The dim of day and lack of wind feels oddly oppressive, as though the whole place is paused in time, waiting for something. Superstition or not, it is a town with an unnatural affinity for reflecting the mood of its people and Booker shivers to think of what that mood could end up being, by tonight. He glances up to check the time while Nile follows closely on his heels. On the horizon, just above the trees, the sun is straining towards its highest point, racing time to reach it by noon, and they join the race, hurrying while trying not to seem like they are hurrying. They fall together into the shadow of a building a few streets away to observe the main church of Elvagyodask, sitting perfectly innocuously on the northern edge of town, with a direct view down to the lake. Hopefully, if all goes well, Nicky is in there, wheedling the whereabouts of Joe and Andy from the fanatics he used to call his colleagues, and family, in case they do not find the location without him, drawing the eye of the Church his way so they can slip through the streets unobserved. Booker subtly crosses his fingers in his pocket and tries to pretend it is not a vain gesture. And waits.

The sun rises and rises, and people begin to shuffle into the church. Not many of them are _not_ priests, but there are some. Booker keeps an eye out but no one stands out that he recognises, either from experience or description. Neither Kozak nor Keane make an appearance that he can confidently identify, and Joe and Andy are also absent. Nicolò is equally nowhere to be seen, and Booker dares to start to hope that victory will be theirs. 

In the small lull of waiting Booker wonders what had happened at the shore, the little beach, when Nicky had shown up that morning to complete his ritual washing and meet his escort. Had they exchanged small talk, discussed the weather, shared preaching tips? Had Nicky wondered, even for the smallest moment, if some of these people had to be just as trapped as he was? Or had he wondered - in the face of overwhelming and undeniable mass-support for the fanatical ideology he has unwittingly been part of - how so many people could possibly be mistaken, and if he might not be the one thinking awry?

Booker wondered, and still wonders, why Nicky alone seems to have no knowledge of the things the Church deems acceptable collateral for their worship. How he had made it all the way to thirty years old before they had attempted to induct him into their true order. Is it simply the lure of circumstance, ceremony, the chance to coincide several fateful changes of course at once, to lend more meaning to each one by proximity to the others? Or is it perhaps something else, something also relating to the oddities of their cult, that had kept him pure in some sense, the way other such organisations had put emphasis on a different way of remaining unsullied?

They may never know. And is that not just the rub of it, the part that chafes? There might be answers out there, available information to fill in the blanks, read the whole, true story in full - but they have not had the time nor access to piece it all together. The most they can do is act on what they know and save the people they can and hope that it is enough, in the end, to make even the smallest amount of difference.

"The ceremony must be close to beginning, soon," Nile murmurs beside him. She returns his glance, and sighs softly. "I cannot help but picture him in there, caught and hurt-"

"We have to trust he can do it," Booker replies gently, although really he shares Nile’s concern, and she knows it. “Just wait a few more minutes and then we can go. Getting moving again will help how you feel."

“Perhaps. I am just worried," Nile admits. "What if the hours we have are not enough to-"

"Not joining the service?"

The new voice scares them both into jumping, clutching each other. Behind them when they turn is a man, and a few more come strolling up to stand at his back. Booker knows with a certainty that weighs as heavy as the dread in his stomach that this is Keane. He does not need to hear the English, nor see the man’s familiar hat perched on his head to be sure.

"We aren't religious, but thank you," Nile responds quickly, a futile attempt but an attempt nonetheless. Booker just stares. _This man took Joe_ , he remembers. Vaguely, and dreamlike, but he remembers. "We were just out for a walk."

"You are invited, Miss Freeman," Keane says, with less brevity than before, his face starting to harden from its polite smile. "I am sure Brother Nicolò would be delighted to have familiar faces in attendance. Come along now."

Nile tenses at Booker’s side. Booker is likewise ready to bolt. But there are footsteps behind them now, from the direction of the church, and two more men appear to cut off their last avenue of escape.

Keane blinks evenly at them. "I was not asking."

The men behind him sweep Booker and Nile up with tight grips, pulling them along and across the street to the church. They stop by the large main doors, and - after a moment of quiet discussion between Keane and his men, and silent, frantic eye-contact between Booker and Nile - find themselves pushed through, stumbling into the hall.

* * *

Everything has gone very wrong. 

Nicolò had started the day by telling himself in no uncertain terms that he was to do this. He was to be determined, resilient, adaptable, and above all - successful. All he had expected to do was pretend to be exactly what he has been all his life, and hope that Booker and Nile would find their friends. Try to discover the location for himself so that he could pass it on if it became necessary, after the service. Play the bait, the distraction, and not get found out. 

It had started well, in fact - meeting Keane at the small beach below the church, just after dawn, sharing polite smiles and greetings before getting on with the washing. The bracing cold had given him a good excuse for seeming unenthused when Keane had tried to draw him into conversation, giving him precious moments of peace to turn his head to the task before him as he dressed in his gifted outfit.

From Keane, Nicky had been ushered into the company of the heads of the main church to await the opening of the service, kept firmly within sight. He had calmly accepted and placed himself where he was put, watching the hall fill, sending prayer after prayer up to try and ensure Joe and Andy are found while he stands and tries not to flinch at every friendly clap of a hand to his back or arm. Priests had filled the pews, hemming him in so the door felt further and further away, most of them damp and shivering. Nicky had watched carefully, for signs of Andromache, Yusuf's parents, and Yusuf himself in case Keane had been lying. Keane had also made himself conspicuously scarce, but that had hardly felt like much of a loss to Nicolò.

But it _does_ feel like a loss, a defeat, when - just as the priest who was to open the service, Father Sykes, steps forwards to the pulpit to get them started - the door at the back of the church creaks open and reveals his fellow conspirators.

All Nicky can do is stare as Booker and Nile appear at the back of the church while they are supposed to be out searching, with Keane following behind them. He is lucky he is not the current focus of attention, because no amount of clearing his throat can pass off his thoughts screeching to a panicked halt as anything less than wholly suspicious. Nicolò struggles to keep his face neutral and his eyes from staring. It seems pointless anyway, from the smug, knowing look on Keane’s face, directed his way. 

That bastard had known all along. 

His heart drops through the floor and his knees threaten to give out. _Joe_ …

"And now, before his investiture and ordination as our new Father, I would like to invite Brother Nicolò to speak. I believe he has some words to share with us all." Father Sykes turns and holds a hand out, startling Nicolò from his spiral of sorrow. He manages to contain it with a tiny smile, inclining his head and placing his hands on the pulpit to hide the shaking of them. The gloves look too pristine on the wood, and he struggles to pluck his sermon speech papers into order, already set in place for him. He would normally alternate between looking down at his notes to keep pace and up at the gathered crowd, but he finds he cannot stand to look towards Booker and Nile, unwilling to put them in any more danger with his attention. And unwilling to see Keane’s inevitable triumphant smile at their side. _Think, think_ , he tells himself. _Find a way to get them out._

All he can do while his mind whirls is start on his speech, all-too aware of the many eyes on him, eyes that know exactly what he has been prepared to do later that same night.

_Oh, Joe._

"My fellow," he clears his throat to inject a little more volume into it. "My fellow priests of Elvagyodask, and gathered children of the Lord. I confess when I first planned this sermon I had not expected to be in such a grand house of God, nor in front of so many esteemed guests. I can only hope my humble words will prove suitable for your ears, as I hope they ever remain for His.

"Our Father would bid us meet any obstacle with strength of will and faith; with pride and certainty if we but follow His words; with humility and grace under sufferance knowing that whatever we face we face at His behest, and will overcome if He wills it so. We have found ourselves in a time of great trial in recent months, but I implore you, or remind you, to stand tall and trust in Him." Nicolò pauses to wet his lips, chancing a glance up at the sea of faces, neutral and patiently listening. 

"With that trust, we would place in him the silent hope, of the words of our forebears; ' _Lead us to plenty and to prosperity, grant us the wit and wherewithal to take what you provide and prove ourselves worthy_.' And so He shall." There is a soft murmur and a flurry of hands, settling quickly. Nicolò breathes and focuses on his words.

"There is however, always a way forward to be found. Of a time, the chance may come that we must seek the Lord's will in other ways, if not clearly written." _That does not sound familiar_. "Sacrifices must be made, Abraham himself taught us to be sensitive to the Lord's will for it is mysterious and changeable, and such things are sent to test us. We will be tested, and we will emerge anew. In such times, our Lord might demand of us what we may be afraid to give." _That does not sound familiar at all._ "We may ask Him; ' _Silence our hunger and let not our sin befall our children, for they are starved and we are able to find salvation to their ends. Merciful God deliver for us our needs._ ' And should he deliver it would be to our own detriment to refuse Him."

Nicolò stares down at the pages on the pulpit under his gloved fingers. He recognises some of it, or feels he must - as though he is walking in a dream and knows instinctively that a building that is entirely unfamiliar must be his home. But the words feel wrong in his mouth, scalding like acid along his tongue, roughening his throat. He does look up at Nile and Booker then, seeking them for help and reassurance, but they are both simply looking at him with equal horror. He looks at Father Sykes, the other priests sat in front of him waiting to speak, and they all have the same expression; expectant smiles full of approval.

It does not matter if he wrote these words or not, Nicky realises. They are meant for him nonetheless. In fact they might well have been written for him for a very long time, since the previous rise of such a sentiment, when last a priest stood - he guesses in this very place - and read them ahead of murdering a young woman for the crime of being expendable. There is no clear answer as to why Quỳnh had been chosen, nor Joe, beyond their relevance and important to the context at their respective times. Just another thing to which they have no answer.

In the dark of night, once they' had attempted to sleep after their planning, Nicky had privately wondered if he would even care to oppose his family and religion quite so ardently had the victim not been Joe. Would he have given in and committed the acts they desired of him? Or would he have protested, but tokenly, weakly, caving at the last moment when the hunger grew too much? It gnaws at him that he does not know for sure. It had burned in his belly that Joe was not there to hold and reassure him. It had _ached_ that he could not be sure Joe _would_ have, had he known where Nicky’s thoughts lay.

"Brother Nicolò?" Father Sykes whispers when the pause drags on too long. He leans forwards on the pew, an encouraging, warm smile offered up to Nicky. It looks like sweet poison, the beauty of thin ice over a lake, ready to shatter and swallow him whole. "It is alright. Just keep reading, child, it will all be quite alright."

 _How can you say such a thing?_ Nicky wonders, but he feels a little dizzy, too-hot in the robes and gloves despite the chill of the season. He looks back down at the paper and thinks of plans and subterfuge and playing his part. There is only one way to fix this, he has to be determined, resilient, and most importantly adaptable. The job is not yet over, the deed not yet done. He steels himself, squares his shoulders and pulls demure humility around himself like a cloak. 

Brother Nicolò opens his mouth to continue, and speaks Holy murder into the hearts of those that listen.

"' _To solve the problem; first identify the sacrifice to be made._ '”

* * *

The lake lies quiet and still between the cradling embrace of the forests and mountains. Wind does not stir its surface today, nor do boats mar the expanse of deep, dark grey, a chilling colour that reflects the equally dour sky, turning it opaque, impossible to see through. What lies beneath? Wrecks of sunken fishing boats perhaps, weeds and silt and debris, certainly no fish. No one knows how deep it is, this odd scar in hardest rock, old glacial meltwater stuck forever in place, and for all it looms over the town it is not vast. Perhaps a blessing then, that half or more of the houses built in Elvagyodask lie empty, fewer mouths to depend on the whims of the ever cruel waters. An overestimation on the part of the man that founded the place, certainly, to place such great dreams, such avarice, on a lake so ill-suited to provide.

From the small window on the lake side of the lighthouse Andy looks out and wonders why anyone believed this a good place to settle.

Dark shadows are already being cast across the interior of the lighthouse as the sun dips steadily lower, sinking wearily back down towards the high, mountain horizon. Immediately after Quỳnh’s visit, or possession, Joe had fallen back into a sleep so deep she could not rouse him for several hours. She had then taken the time to try and break out in every conceivable way, shouting herself nearly hoarse, desperately hoping that somewhere out there must lie at least one decent human being, willing to help. 

No luck, however. The lighthouse might as well be a fortress and the town is as unwilling to be her ally as ever.

Joe's mumbling draws her from her despondent vigil, his fingers twitching along the floor. He starts awake before she can move towards him, casting around and reaching out to pat the wall nearby. When he begins to scratch at it with his fingernail she abruptly remembers his fearful begging from before. " _My fingers are not my own_ ," he'd whimpered. " _The walls are too bare_ …"

Before he can do more than snarl in frustration when he leaves no marks, Andy catches him firmly by the hands, holding as tight as she can, prepared for him to fight her. But Joe just looks at her, blinking those big, tortured brown eyes, and slumps into her with a soft moan, dropping his forehead onto her shoulder. Andy does not dare let go of his hands, just in case, but in order to offer some small comfort - hardly her forté but she was almost warm once and if Quỳnh can rise from the dead then surely she can resurrect that part of herself - she tilts her head to the side and pillows her cheek on top of his messy curls.

"It is so close," Joe croaks after a moment. His breathing is no steadier and his shoulders no less tense, but he has something fierce in his eyes when he lifts his head that makes Andy think of Quỳnh, chest aching terribly. "I saw so much this time, so much more than before. There is so much to _see_ , my head cannot… I cannot quite... Grasp it. Pictures are easier than words, but the picture has changed. No more calm dark and distant light. No more long things reaching - it does not need to _reach_ now, it has been _invited_."

"What do you mean by that now, Joe?" Andy asks carefully.

"They called it! They are hungry and desperate and they _want_ , and they will do what they can to satisfy it, all that greed. But it will not be enough, Andy, not ever. It _is_ greed. It cannot ever sate them, why can they not see that?! Where is Nicky? I have to tell Nicky, he is not safe!"

"Joe, you're upsetting yourself."

"Have I no right to be upset?!" Joe shouts, yanking himself free of her, launching up from the floor and pacing around the circular room like a caged animal. "It lives in my head, laughs at me, taunts me with knowledge! There… I have been in the dark so long the light hurts, but I will be _damned_ if I just let it do what it wants! Do you hear me?!"

Should she tell him about Quỳnh? Andy closes her eyes and swallows. "Joe there is something else."

"Oh, _excellent_. What now?"

She opens one eye to glare at him and he folds his arms defensively, looking away with a mulish set to his jaw, but he stays quiet. "When you were sleeping, well, there was a time that you were not."

"Talking in riddles? I suppose that is a way to pass the time..."

"No, Joe. Listen to me. You woke up, but you were not yourself. It seemed as though there was someone speaking through you. Quỳnh. _Quỳnh_ was speaking through you."

He looks at her. For a moment she thinks he will laugh, but he just sits slowly down against the opposite wall and sighs, motioning for her to continue.

"She was not wildly coherent, but she said the same as you - that it was close, or that she was. That she has been reaching for the light for many years. That she is below the water somehow. She said, she seemed… Just like herself. I don't know how I could have imagined it, or you could have done it yourself."

Joe's lips twist as he thinks. "Andy," he says, far too gently, and she knows just what is coming. "It definitely was not me. Her hands are smaller, lighter, a little younger even, when they reach in my dreams."

"What?" Andy rasps, air sucked out of her by his words, absolutely _not_ what she had expected.

"The hands are new, recent. You must not have seen all the paintings in my rooms, if you never noticed them. They began to creep into the edges before I realised I was painting them, reaching for that light. In my dreams they were my own."

"You _knew_?"

"No! I had an image, but no _knowledge_. I painted pictures of nightmares, Andy, how could I know what they meant?"

She closes her eyes and grinds her teeth and fights the urge to kick something. "All this time, she really has been alive."

"I would not say that. What she feels is not entirely alive. But present? Maybe. Don’t blame yourself - you could not have known. Nor could you have done anything. That is not a guilt you want to carry."

"Are you wise now?" Andy retorts, but Joe just smiles, tiredly.

"Andy, I think we might be about to die," he says plainly. "Whether it is the Doctor or the Church or the thing in my dreams-"

"Quỳnh?" Andy frowns. Joe blinks at her.

"No, the other thing. You said Quỳnh said-"

"But I thought she must mean you, and you must mean her, and-"

"No, Andy. _No_. There is something else in the water, in the air of this place. Whatever those damned priests are up to they just gave it the invitation its been waiting for."

Andy scrambles up, peering out of the window at the lake again. She hears Joe get up and trail over towards her, but she is too busy intently scanning the lake below. It is dark and dour, and impossible to see through. _Too_ impossible.

"What I would not give to be out of this place and able to do some damn research," she mutters. Joe huffs behind her. "I have so many questions. Everything I discover only leads to more."

"Ask them," Joe says.

"How can you answer them, you know less than I do."

There is a brief quiet, then a strange clicking noise, and when she turns around... "Ask me, Andromache," Joe says. Quỳnh says.

"What- Quỳnh, how?"

Quỳnh grins, bouncing a little in place and then darting in to loop her arms around Andy’s neck. "He let me, he let me in this time, no admission fee, no struggle. _Ask me_."

There is no time - there is _never_ time - and Andy is still the consummate professional she always was. Detective mode snaps easily into place, although her arms still wrap around Quỳnh to hold her close. "What happens during the ritual?"

"They come and take you down in the dark to the water in the floor and sink you in and you drown drown drown and never stop. But first they draw up the last one, release him, make you part of him until your bones are his bones and you sleep beside each other in the depths."

Andy shakes her head, trying to decipher the enigmatic descriptions. "Last one? You mean the previous sacrifice?"

"He was cold and clammy and he screamed for his children and they bled him into the water until he stopped. His skin peeled off soon enough while we shared a tomb, then he went off to play with the eels." Quỳnh seems a little too enthusiastic to send the words tripping out. Andy hopes it is only the joy of being able to talk.

"Anything else?"

"They are full of greed. No one is pure. Every intention is to _take take take_. It only understands how to take, never to give, not without payment without sacrifice without recompense. They never send their own down to it, never ever never. Do you understand Andromache?"

"I am trying very hard to." 

Quỳnh leans forward to whisper in her ear. "Time is up. It is coming," she says, and then Andy watches, flinching as Quỳnh steps free of her arms, and Joe surfaces, a horrifyingly bizarre procession of expressions, twitches and the same strange clicking noise in the back of their throat. Joe stumbles and has to lean on the wall while he blinks and shakes his head. When he looks up he is clearly not expecting to see Andy in silent tears, a hand clasped over her mouth.

"Oh, Andy…" he whispers, opening his arms wide. She falls into them and they take the solace that they can.

And meanwhile gears turn, over and over, in Andy's head, powered by the sound of Quỳnh's voice.

* * *

The words that spill out of Nicolò are as revolting as they are intriguing. Nile cannot help herself - she is and always will be a researcher of the human condition, and she can wonder at the sentiments people can convince themselves to believe in while simultaneously decrying them. The nastiness, the depth of delusion of individuals but more often multitudes… It is fascinating.

Every priest and person in the church with them, listening to the awful odes spilling from Nicky's lips as he absolves them of guilt, of morality, of sin in what they are about to do, is fully on board with this whole sorry affair. Perhaps some of the civilians - though it feels odd to distinguish _clergy_ from civilians, as though they are somehow divided in a way soldiers would be ( _but that is exactly the case_ ) - have no idea of the deeper meaning behind the sermon, but Nile cannot quite bring herself to give them the benefit of the doubt today. Booker is grasping her hand tightly, has been since Nicky first started forwards and that filth came out when he spoke, and she feels him shake a little. None of this is fair.

It is really very difficult not to start to feel as though the universe is conspiring against them. Every time they take a step forward they are shoved back, forced to pick themselves up and brush the dust off before moving on again with renewed determination but just that bit more weariness. Nile hopes that Nicky, still pale and preaching at the front of the church, is not losing his own motivation. She _thinks_ Joe is enough to keep him going but realistically she cannot say for sure - she does not know Nicky as well as she would like and he has been a priest for far longer than he has been in love with Joe. Can that withstand the pressure of everyone he knows telling him what to believe?

No, that is not fair - he is better and stronger and kinder than that, and Nile wishes desperately to reassure him, heart aching for him, alone up there and isolated, forced to pretend. But Nicky will not look up anymore and Nile has very little reassurance to share, considering she has _no idea what to do now_. All she can do is wait with Booker and hope that they get a chance to use the knives in their sleeves. She thanks- well perhaps not God - not the God these people worship at least - whatever kindly force there might be out there that Keane and his men had not bothered to search them. Sometimes it really does pay to be underestimated.

When Nicky's part of the service ends Keane mutters something to the men beside them and they file out, taking her and Booker along with them. _Be strong_ , she thinks hard in Nicky's direction. _We can still do this_.

It helps her to believe it too, as the two of them are marched around to the side of the church. The extra room on the side of this one, unlike Nicky's small work room, seems to have an external door.

"In you go, you two can stay nicely out of the way in here until the rest of them decide what to do with you," Keane tells them brusquely, unlocking the door and waiting for them to file in. One man sets up in position by it and the door clunks heavily shut once they are inside, leaving them in darkness, no windows or lights to see by. Unfortunate but not impossible odds to overcome. She has to believe that.

Nile sets to, unwilling to spend a single moment longer in inaction, after having been forced to waste so much time in the church. "Might be able to pick a lock and sneak out," she murmurs, feeling Booker's reply in the squeeze of his hand before he lets go. She can just about hear voices on the other side of the interior door, through which Nicky and the main hall are, and can only hope that there will be a chance to escape through the exterior door instead. One guard is far better odds than a churchful of fanatics, no matter how sharp their knives and how burly the guard.

"Do you think he believes what…" Booker says in the quiet. Nile would send him a glare but it doesn't have quite the right effect in the dark.

And besides, his fears had just recently been her own.

"I do not," she says instead, softly. "Nicky would not abandon Joe, and has done nothing to have us believe he would abandon us either. We asked him to stay undiscovered, this is almost certainly that."

"It just sounds so… Natural, coming from him."

"He was a priest for- he _is_ a priest, Book. It is bound to. Spare him some of that credit, do not write him off so soon."

"I suppose. I just wish we knew where Andy and Joe were. Even if we get out we will not have much of a heading. All that time wasted..."

Nile thinks quickly, wondering if there is anything she has missed that could hint at the answer. They have not uncovered it in their overnight planning, if so, but the oddest things can slip the mind under duress. "All we can do is put our faith in Nicky now. And, as misguided and terrible as his speech is, the message is useful to us - have faith, but act of your own accord. We get ourselves free and then we stick to the plan, follow Nicky, and, honestly? Stab anyone that gets in the way."

When Booker replies, Nile _knows_ he is smiling.

"You know what, Nile? There truly is no one I would rather stab cultists with than you."

"Flatterer."

* * *

_In the dark in the deep it sleeps and it stirs and it curls and it reaches out. It hungers it aches and it wants to take whatever it can whatever it is given but there is nothing that can sate its ever unsatisfied self. It is called by a voice it is drawn to the light that sits atop and begs it to give more, ever more. It sits and stirs and if this offering is as paltry as the last it will finish its work and tear the murmurers to shreds and devour them with the very same Greed that it lives for and lives as and leaves behind, seeping into every pore of the world around it, every little beating animal heart. Long years it has worked to sharpen the edge of that hunger, of that need, that want, and at last the scuttling beasts that feed it are so nearly ripe for the plucking. It stirs and stirs and stretches up and tastes the air and finds them ready. Ready to consume themselves and each other in a glorious final rapturous ritual in its name._


	9. To sink; to surface

In the main church of Elvagyodask, constricted by his gifted clothing and the weight of the world, Nicolò sits and does not listen. His sermon had been well-received, though to call it _his_ feels entirely incorrect. His words were there; hope in dire times, ' _And thus they were forgiven, and their lives became full of life and light,_ ' resounding at the end just as it should always have been. But they had been twisted and chopped and remade into something horrible, writhing on the page like a monster, unnatural and far from Godly. All of reality seems to tremble and shrink around him, and turn away from what has been created, what he has spoken alive into it.

Nicky feels numb. Beneath his robes he is sure he must have faded into dust, the sheer disgust and palpable distaste at his own speech - necessary though it was - dissolving through him until everything but the core of him is gone. _It was for Joe_ , he reminds himself again and again. _Without this you cannot save Joe_.

He hopes that is proven true.

The service is over before he has even noticed, and when he looks Booker and Nile are gone, Keane along with them. There must still be a way, a chance, but it feels small and far from their grasp.

Father Sykes calls him up for the ordination, running the water over his empty face, calling out for him to repeat without a hint of emotion in his voice. It nonetheless goes without a hitch, though afterwards Nicky cannot remember a single second of it. He feels changed, but not the way they want him to - forged in an inner fire that the dust has let blaze in its wake; that the water cannot reach. The priests, his family, congratulate him and call him Father and he wants to scream, but he smiles instead and thinks it might convey the same feeling. His cousin certainly gives him an odd enough look as she walks up to greet him, blanching away from his eyes. _Good_.

"Come Nicolò, you are needed elsewhere. The sun will set soon, and as you so eloquently explained; our sacrifice remains to be made," Father Sykes says with a friendly hand upon his shoulder.

"Where am I going?" Nicky replies quietly, voice bland. Sykes eyes him and then smiles.

"To collect our guest of honour. Do you remember your words, about tests? This is yours, Nicolò. Do not fail Him now."

"I will not. My every action is to live in a way that would make Him proud."

"Good man. Then it is time. Keane will take you to where you can wait and once the night has fallen we will join you." _So we were right about that at least_.

The two of them peel off from the milling crowd, exiting the church. Nicky thinks he should feel something, cold perhaps, but there is only that pervasive numbness and a new, roiling heat in his stomach. The light outside is already low enough not to make him squint after leaving the building, but it still seems to take a few blinks before his vision clears and he can see the people standing around clearly, instead of as hazy shapes. It would be easy to blame the hunger in his belly for that, having not eaten since just before dawn, but the more likely culprit is the rage that keeps him near-blinded from anything that is not Joe.

Sykes leads him over to Keane, around by the outer door to the main church’s extra chamber, who smiles with far too much joy behind his eyes. Nicky glances at the man standing guarding the door and thinks, _ah ha_. _Got you_.

"Shall we, Father?" Keane offers with a courteous nod, his eyes never straying from Nicky's face, watching him like a predator watches prey. The joke is on him - Nicky has never felt less like a mouse in all his years of unobtrusive living.

Nicky's teeth crunch and grind, but Sykes does not notice, babbling about guiding a new priest, the changes of duty with becoming a Father, greater responsibility and perhaps more time spent in the main church. _Plans for the future, for a day after today, when their hands drip red_. "Good luck with your part, Nicolò, and bless you. It has been a lot to take in I am sure, but you are doing so well. We are all very proud of the man you have become."

Keane leads him away before he can incriminate himself with a response.

When they stop outside the lighthouse Nicky nearly tears his hair out in frustration, at his own oversight. Of course it is the lighthouse. Joe was trying to reach the lighthouse before - maybe if they had listened, if they had believed him, his dreams would have been more useful than they assumed. 

There is no one at the door when they arrive, and Keane winks when Nicky frowns. "The place is impenetrable. And we hardly have to worry about anyone trying to break in, do we."

Nicky wants to hit him. Instead he nods. And a good thing too, as Keane suddenly pulls a pistol from within his coat, cocking it and holding it casually down by his side. Nicky tries to avoid looking at it too hard, ignoring the bead of sweat that tickles at the back of his neck. In the moment that Keane does _not_ aim it at him Nicky suddenly realises that among all of the misfortune of the day he has stumbled across one small piece of good luck - Keane does not suspect him. Or, more likely, he believes what Nicky was meant to lead them all to believe; that despite his relationship with Joe, he is still too much a priest of Elvagyodask to go against his ‘holy’ duties. Keane thinks him no threat, and that gives Nicky the advantage. If only he can figure out how to use it, against the man and his gun.

"Come, through here. Our little lamb awaits us. It is unfortunate that he was chosen - what with you two developing a friendship of sorts. But we did work quite hard to find the right candidate, and he is undeniably that. Doctor Kozak alerted us to the possibility of using him, even though he had been pinpointed as the Church’s sacrifice first.” That makes it sound like- “His connection to the creature is phenomenal. Returning him to it, body and soul, will be just what we need."

"What creature?" Nicky asks, blurting the question out before he can think better of it and decide that he categorically does not want to know. He does not care what these fanatics think. He does not want to know their logic or their ideals or their twisted concept of morality. He wants it all to remain as far from and foreign to him as possible.

"Awaiting in the lake," Keane says, turning to stand too close to him on the flagstone floor of the lighthouse, the intensity of fervour an undercurrent in his voice. "You will understand it all later, Father. In the meantime, I must thank you for your participation thus far, unknowing though it was. You truly played your part wonderfully well, although we did lose track of the two of you at the end there. But fortune struck, and God was with us. It was fate that we were already keeping an eye on the librarian and the girl, and happened to hear al-Kaysani in there with them and the Detective."

Nicky refuses to respond, his every thought an anthem of, _for Joe, for Joe, for Joe_. He steels himself to climb the steep steps of the lighthouse stairs behind Keane, eyeing the pistol all the while. They wind, narrow and open at the sides, up from the ground floor to the first, where they end on a thick door with a rather hefty lock. Keane pulls out a large iron key and unlocks it, swinging it inwards to reveal Joe scrambling up onto his feet. He retreats back against the far wall and holds a hand out in front of him defensively, scowling and snarling and baring his teeth in a rather fierce display of defiance. Nicky's heart thumps wildly to see him again, flitting over him quickly and relieved to note that he seems visibly unharmed, if incredibly distressed. " _Joe_ ," he breathes, quiet enough to be hidden by Keane's loud, "There you are, little lamb."

"I will not be going anywhere with you!" Joe declares boldly despite the gun held at Keane's side.

Keane frowns, ignoring him and looking around instead. "Of course you will. Everything has been set up and prepared by hands outside all of us here in this room, and you are all we need to finish it. Where is the detective?"

"Your _doctor_ took her," Joe spits, drawing himself up tall. He so rarely stands fully upright that Nicky had almost forgotten what a splendid, impressive figure he cuts, and even in this dingy lighthouse, even scruffy and exhausted and in genuine mortal peril Yusuf al-Kaysani is resplendent. Nicky's lips lift without his say so, but he cannot begrudge them.

"No matter then. Father? If you would collect your lamb." Keane waits by the door as Nicky tentatively steps into the room. How long does he keep up the farce? He was supposed to pretend, until Nile and Booker could follow, but they are trapped in the church. And Joe is here.

In the deepening dark he can just about see his reflection either side of him in the front and back windows. They stare ahead at Joe, priest and man, and Nicky wonders for a fleeting moment about dichotomy and inner conflict and choosing your own destiny. Idle thoughts that flit in and out of his head, and afterwards he sees only Joe, eyes pleading, hand softened from warding to reaching.

Keane clears his throat and Nicky turns to him. "Where are we taking him?" he asks, hoping it is casual enough to be believed. Joe certainly worries for a moment, if the bitten off cry of protest is any indication. It hurts Nicky not to look to him, send him reassurance, but he has to make this look good.

"Downstairs. Bring him and I will show you. The others must be waiting already. Not sure why they took the detective first but Mr. Merrick has had some unusual ideas so far. Perhaps he changed plans, _again_."

"Excuse me, did you say Mr. _Merrick_?" Joe asks. Nicky's jaw is equally on the floor. Keane just shifts uncomfortably and waves at Nicky with the gun, making him flinch.

"Hurry this up, alright Father? Just hurry up."

"Of course," Nicky agrees quickly, smothering whatever else Joe was about to say, inhaling sharply. He goes to his beloved, brushing the fingers of his gloved hand over Joe's wrist lightly and gazing at him, hoping to convey his plan. Joe grits his teeth and looks away, and Nicky can only hope that it is an act. Please let it be an act.

He takes Joe by the arm, lightly clasping just above his elbow and guiding him down with Keane behind them. They descend carefully into the main room, and then Keane directs them, oddly, outside. There is a thin walkway around the outer wall of the lighthouse that slopes gently downwards in a spiral, and Keane guides them gingerly onto it in front of him. All Nicky can think is that there must be a boat waiting for them on the opposite side to take them somewhere else, from where they will not be able to escape... He glances back at Keane once, only to be waved forwards impatiently.

Joe edges carefully onto the thin platform first, clinging to the wall and being cautious with his steps. Nicky is not much better. The lighthouse is wide enough that they cannot see the town by the time they reach the far side, facing out into the lake, the town and shore have disappeared from view. The water is still a way below them, and the walkway simply keeps going, curling back around and ever downwards, back towards the town side. Nicky looks forward at the back of Joe’s head. He looks back at Keane. He makes his decision.

With a swift move borne of adrenaline, he turns and pushes Keane hard, snapping his hands out to pluck the gun away from the man's outstretched arm as he topples with a scream.

The man goes _flying_.

There are rocks as well as water at the edge of the lighthouse foundations below them. Keane hits both and sinks out of view in seconds.

"Nicky?!" Joe gasps, coming back around the edge to grasp his sleeve. Nicky tears his eyes away from gazing at where Keane is no longer, looking at Joe. The numbness and fire inside him have frozen over into solid ice. His gloves are discoloured, dirtied by holding the wall, and he is surprised they are not visibly red when he glances down.

Joe's hand lifts his chin. "Nicky," he says again, gentle and cautious. "You killed him."

Nicky flinches from the recrimination but Joe's eyes hold only wonder, awe at the depth of devotion that could lead to such an act perhaps. Gratitude too. He cups Nicky's cheek and kisses him on the walkway, sandwiched by the stone of the lighthouse and the still waters of the lake, hidden from view from what feels like the rest of the world.

"Woops," Nicky manages weakly when they part, and they laugh against each other's faces for a moment before sobering quickly. "The others, they are at the main church. We should get them if we want to save Andy."

"Absolutely. And quick. Andy, she- I did not understand all of what she said but she offered herself instead of me. Kozak agreed she was a better candidate for their work, whatever that is supposed to mean. And something else happened, but I will tell all of you together when we find Nile and Booker."

With a brisk nod Nicky leads the way back around, holding the gun carefully until he can figure out how to ensure it will not go off at any moment. They move as quickly and confidently as possible back to the church once it is stowed safely away, not that there is anyone around to hide it from. The outside of the church is equally abandoned, although Nicky points out the lights in the window and explains to Joe that the rest of the priests are probably awaiting the time of the ceremony inside. Whatever it is that Keane and Kozak and _Merrick_ are planning must be something a little different.

Puzzles within puzzles, plots within plots, rituals within rituals. The mysteries only ever compound.

* * *

"This is _hopeless_!" Nile cries, still trying to keep her voice down, and really trying to keep it together. It is just hard to remain positive, practical and proactive when there seems to be no way out. Booker had picked the lock a while ago on the interior door but the church has not emptied one bit, and the exterior door is locked from the outside, cutting them off on both sides. "At this rate what can we possibly hope to achieve?!"

"Nile," Booker says slowly, conciliatory, from where he is keeping his ear to the door in case someone comes to fetch them.

"I apologise, Book, but I am struggling to see any bright side. Any hope at _all_."

"Nile?"

"It’s not that I want to simply give in and sit down for a bit, but I would quite like to do that!"

" _Nile_."

"I _know_ that it isn’t useful behaviour, but I am really very tired and our friends might _die_ and we are stuck and might _also die_ , and-"

"Miss Freeman!"

She looks over in his direction, affronted. She still cannot see him, but her silence gives him an opening to continue. "There is something happening outside. Hush for a moment so I can listen."

Nile holds her breath, crossing her fingers. She slides the dagger carefully out of her sleeve as well, wondering if this is their chance, their moment. If this is when she says goodbye to a lifetime of... Well, not _peace_ per se, but certainly a lack of deliberate bloodshed. The door clunks as it is unlocked, the guard pushes it open with a murmur, and then-

"Booker?"

Joe's voice. 

Joe's voice? 

Joe's voice! 

Nile darts forwards, squinting against the light, and stops dead next to Booker. She peers out into the evening and sees Nicky talking to the guard before the man nods seriously, puffs up his chest with pride and marches off.

"Nicky?" she asks carefully, passing where Booker and Joe are speaking very fast to one another, catching up on everything. She raises a hand to his shoulder and hovers it there, looking at the robes from up close. He looks a bit of a mess, really, but he also very much looks the part of the cult priest and she cannot stop her heart thumping at the memory of his words earlier in the afternoon.

"Hello Nile," he smiles shyly, breaking the spell in an instant. "I sent him off to guard the front door until Keane comes to get him." The smile turns a little wicked, a surprisingly good look on the normally demure man. "Keane will not be coming to get him."

"Did you-" How do you ask someone if they killed a man? Thankfully he understands and, with a more sombre look, ducks his head. He looks at his shoes and nods once, jerkily.

Somehow summoned by Nicky's mood, Joe steps up into his side, ushering them off quickly along the darkening street. "We need to move, my love. Nile, hello, sorry we have no time for all the explanations, but Andy has been taken, she is somewhere in the lighthouse. While we walk however, I promised to tell Nicky something that happened today. There was…” He takes a breath and Nile watches in concern as the words rush out of him, as hurried as their pace. “There is no easy way to say this but I believe Quỳnh's spirit, ah, sort of possessed me? Nicky?”

Nicky has frozen stock still, staring at Joe with disbelief. "Possessed?" he echoes. Booker looks equally skeptical, and Nile only just hides her own. "That is impossible, such things are not real."

"I cannot prove it, but Andy believed it to be true. And I… Left my own mind for a while. When I returned I was still standing in place, and Andy looked as though she had seen a ghost. She _cried_."

"Well now we _know_ you must be making it up," Booker jokes weakly, but it falls flat. They stand in silence for a moment before Joe casts around, affecting a smile that does not stretch as wide as it should. 

"Well. Believe me or not but Andy still needs our help."

He is right of course, even if Nile would like to get a little more detail about that wild claim, wondering just how badly affected he has been by the drugs in his system. But Andy needs their help and Nile's dagger is sharp and ready in her hand and they have to help. Joe glances at the dagger and raises an eyebrow, mouth ticked up in approval. Nile has to shoot him a grin back, some of her misgivings fleeing at the sight of the genuine, lucid expression on his face. Perhaps there is some nugget of truth to his words. She can believe in cults and mystical twenty-year repeating rituals, after all. That had been a leap of faith, why not jump that bit further?

It is at the moment their feet lead them directly to the jetty of the lighthouse that that small thought truly takes root. Nile looks at Joe, and Joe shrugs, but he looks a little grimly vindicated. "The lighthouse, eh?" she murmurs. He nods.

"We follow the walkway and I suspect there is a door somewhere below us, under this jetty, that leads into a lower floor hidden from the rest. We only know for certain that Andy, Doctor Kozak and Merrick will be there."

" _Merrick_?!"

"Did you say-"

"Yes, Merrick. A Mr. Merrick, Keane mentioned him and no, we know no more than that," Nicky hastens to explain. "There could be more people inside of course, but with the secrecy of their actions I am not sure this is acting with the knowledge of the Church. I see you two have found some interesting items-" he nods at Nile's knife and the matching one Booker is pulling out. "- and I have this, but I do not… I do not know how to use it," he finishes, gingerly pulling out _a gun_. "It was Keane's. I'm barely confident holding the thing."

"Let me," Joe offers, holding his hand out. They all look at him and he rolls his eyes, looking genuinely annoyed. "I am hardly going to go mad and turn on you now, if I have not yet. And that is not how it works. Do you not trust me?"

Nicky looks at him and his eyebrows pinch. Nile turns her own gaze to Booker to gauge his stance. Are the thoughts in his head following the same lines as her own? What are those lines, she can hardly tell, only that her instinct was to tense when Joe offered to hold the gun.

Booker breaks the stalemate when he smiles at her, something fond and knowing in it. He lifts a hand to squeeze her shoulder, a mimic of all the times she has done the same, and looks to Joe. "I think we should give you more credit, my friend. Besides, you cannot possibly reach the level of insanity of the priests we had to listen to, present company excepted of course."

Trusting him makes Joe beam, and the joke makes Nicky huff softly. Nile lets the break in tension wash over her like a ray of sun after a cloudy day, flooding her with warmth and that lovely balm of hope. Joe does seem a lot more comfortable with the gun than Nicky, murmuring quickly about self-defense lessons when he was younger, and admittedly Nile is reassured to see it held in his confident grip. She almost wishes she had offered to take it herself, having some small experience with such things, to avoid the mess of the dagger, but sets that aside to concentrate instead on definites, rather than might-have-beens.

They step one by one onto the walkway and wind carefully around the lighthouse wall as the sun sinks out of sight below the mountains, leaving an array of pinks in the sky that are dimly visible through the thin cloud cover.

And when they make the full rotation and find themselves near the water level, below the jetty, staring at an innocuous, hidden door… Nile readies herself for battle.

* * *

Detective Andromache, sometimes known as Sheriff, more often known simply as Andy, is tired.

Tired of the town, tired of grief, tired of her own pervasive exhaustion. Tired of mysteries and conspiracies and cults. Tired of strange happenings and clinging to realism only to be flung from its embrace by the sound of her old, dead sweetheart's words from a near-stranger's mouth.

She adds 'tired of Stephen Merrick' to the list about three minutes after meeting him, in the damp hidden room beneath the lighthouse. The pompous, smarmy Englishman talks like a champion and says very little, spouting off grandiose quotes and monologuing his fantastic, genius plan aloud as though she cares even one whit about how they had all ended up here when all she wants is to leave. Or perhaps lie down and go to sleep for a while.

Doctor Kozak is not much better, considering she is supposed to be an educated professional in the field of medicine. Andy supposes at least she was more concerned with her own opinions than swaying Andy's, which puts her a leg above Merrick, who _will not stop justifying himself_.

"We will change the world! World hunger? Who needs it? A simple ritual every once in a while and voilà, solved. We will have volunteers lining up. You see; what my ancestors did not understand was that you cannot expect to take without giving back. And they were not prepared to work _with_ the Church to do so. To straddle the line of science and business and the mystical things in the world.

"But me? I am a visionary! I read all the lore, all the histories of the locals and of the family. Did you know, when my great-great… However many greats-grandfather brought the thing back to this lake he cut it from a larger beast? How much more of it could be out there… How much could it _grow_? I spoke to James Copley, after he sent that girl here, and we discussed some very interesting ideas around harnessing such things."

Andy tunes out once again with a sigh and a roll of her eyes. If she had known this was what she would end up suffering upon demanding to be taken instead of Joe, she might… _No, she would not have chosen differently._ Because the thought that had arisen, after Quỳnh's replies, coupled with Kozak's initial dangerous offer to see Quỳnh again? 

If there is _any_ chance, any possible way to make that happen then it will be from down here, rather than up there letting Joe be sacrificed to some strange imaginary godling.

Kozak interrupts Merrick when he starts to snap at Andy for ignoring him, distracting him with a question about a stack of papers she has arranged on a little table, the only piece of furniture in the place. Andy stays kneeling in place, hands bound in front of her, gazing at the trapdoors nearby. The trapdoors that will be opened as Kozak had promised; the trapdoors that have a thick chain running from the ceiling down through a hole in the centre where the two doors meet, complete with a mechanism attached to the wall to be used for pulling something very heavy up from below. Morbidly curious, Andy _has_ to know if whatever they bring up will contain a living body, preserved through forces stranger than she can imagine, or if there will be nothing left but slimy bones, collapsed down after years of decomposition. Will Quỳnh smile at her from her own face again, or was what they had upstairs, with Joe as proxy, all they could have?

Really, in truth, there is a part of Andy that is as yet unconvinced that it was real. Oh, she would love to believe it, throw caution to the wind and declare the mystical and magical things of the world real, but her psyche is too firmly rooted in the sensible, the tangible, the knowable. It was why she had never particularly got along with God, even before the poor fellow had been hijacked over and over in support of some fanatical cause or other. And now for this… A shining example of fanatical causes, a prince among cults, a role-model for all mad religions looking for something fun to preach.

"Where is Keane, and that priest?" Merrick snaps, finally catching Andy's genuine attention. "We need the priest. And the al-Kaysani son would still be a better fit for the creature, Meta, I fail to see why you would change and go against my directions at the last minute." His voice is a high whine that actively hurts Andy's ears, but she is curious now, to hear about what might be going wrong up above, so she forces herself to listen. Doctor Kozak looks her way and smiles, not a happy thing but a simple, neutral response.

"She fits very well, Mr. Merrick. She is intimately connected to the previous sacrifice, and desires nothing more than to see her again. I believe you also said you had spoken to Quỳnh's spectre?" Kozak raises her voice in Andy's direction and under Merrick's scrutiny Andy inclines her head. It does her no good to lie, here, when her desired outcome is exactly as the Doctor had said.

"When are we getting on with it then?" she taunts them, pleased by the clench of Merrick's jaw and the stony look on Kozak's.

"Keane should _be here_ ," Merrick hisses. Kozak just shrugs.

"But he is not. We can begin without the priest, he is an accessory anyhow, a help but not a requirement. All that we need for the ritual is right here in the notes. With your blood the whole thing is potent enough as it is, and if she does not work then we can use al-Kaysani instead."

It is never a good sign when fanatics talk about blood. But luckily Andy has been preparing herself for a murder ritual, so at least it comes as no surprise.

She waits with bated breath as Kozak sets the machine turning, the chain ticking up and up, loudly winding around the wheel, wet and covered in weeds from sitting below the water for two full decades. Water drips from the chain onto the floor with gunshot-like splats, and tense as she is; Andy flinches. It takes what feels like an age and then the whole thing jams with a horrid _screech_ , and Merrick perks up eagerly.

"Next step?" he asks, gleeful. Andy hopes he ends the day dead as a doornail.

Kozak inclines her head and pulls out a small knife, pricking the end of his thumb deeply. As deep red wells up from the cut Merrick hurries to the trapdoor and sticks the digit through the hole, into the water with a hiss. He holds it there until something…

Well, Andy can hardly explain it. A thud seems to go through the whole room, and the chain just _unlocks_ somehow. Merrick jumps back as another thud shudders through, and then a deeper sound than could be heard ripples up from below, ringing through the stones and their skin and bones. Andy's teeth ache and she groans, fighting the urge to tense every single muscle in her body while the not-noise continues. Merrick _looks_ like he is laughing but she cannot tell, cannot hear a single thing, but _can_ see the chain start to move again.

The ritual, whatever bastard version they are trying to create, has started. Quỳnh and Joe had been right - it is here. Whatever _it_ is, Andy believes them.

When the trapdoors start to lift up in the centre as something pushes up from below Andy trembles like a leaf, but stays frozen in utter, perfectly distilled terror. She has never felt anything like it, it pushes all other feelings out.

Although it does not, entirely. Because there is still a thrill of hope, of desperate, clawing love that sits in her chest and clings on to see what will happen next.

A great iron maiden lifts out of water and the trapdoors fall back with a _bang_. It looks as though half the floor is now just water, and the enormous, looming figure fills the room with its presence, hung in the air above the opening.

Andy does not see the way the water moves and glows slightly with an inner light. She does not see Kozak start to read, nor Merrick pick up the small knife and creep towards her. Her every sense is straining towards the maiden, listening for sounds of life, trying to see if there is a face below the holes cut for eyes, for a mouth, though no one would be screaming for long, trapped in this horror under the lake.

With a crack and a creak and a rush of water; it opens.

* * *

Joe has felt many strange sensations in his life that he could not explain. He is nonetheless unsettled by this latest one, a strange shockwave - _two in quick succession!_ \- that had passed through them and forced them to stumble into each other, clinging on for support.

"What was that?" Nile gasps. Booker groans, gripping onto Joe's back and shaking himself.

"Something beginning," Nicky whispers, looking at Joe with his eyes big and concerned. "Let me go in first, I may be able to put them off guard if I can convince them Keane is coming, relay to you how many there are."

"And put yourself in danger without a weapon? No, Nicky! I will not allow it!"

"I have done worse today without your permission, Yusuf," Nicky reminds him, short but not unkind. "I go in first."

Joe grits his teeth and growls softly but waves towards the door. He hates the idea of it, of letting Nicky out of his sight again after what happened last time. But this time he has a gun, so how bad could it be? For him; not at all. For Nicky?

"Wait," he sighs, catching Nicky by the sleeve. He darts in for a brief, light kiss. "For luck."

His beloved priest reaches up to touch his cheek in reply, and then steps into the secret lighthouse chamber, slipping around the door to keep them hidden. Joe wishes he had the room to pace in agitation. Not even Nile's soft reassurance that Nicky knows what he can handle, can soothe him. It might be because of how shaky and uncertain her voice is. In the end the reminder that he is not the only one feeling unnerved is what serves to get him to force himself into stillness, checking the pistol again and readying himself for Nicky's word.

Only Nicky does not come back out, so all of Joe's careful calm evaporates as quickly as he had pulled it together. Ignoring Booker's protests that it has only been a few minutes - as though Nicky would need that long to go in, ascertain the numbers and pretend to come and collect Keane - Joe yanks the door open and enters, gun up, Booker and Nile right behind him.

The door seems to haul itself shut behind them, sealing them into the hellscape below.

Laid out in the room below - and it is below, they stand at the top of a set of steps that lead down into it - are four people. Nicky is currently against the wall, pinned by a man who can only be Merrick with a knife at his throat. Kozak is reading, droning, from a piece of paper, and Andy is kneeling in front of a huge iron coffin thing, the door of which is slowly groaning its way open, the contents hidden from view from their angle. Her eyes and face speak volumes.

Quỳnh must be in there.

"Let him go!" Joe shouts, directing his focus back to Merrick instead, hurrying down the steps with the gun pointed straight at Merrick. The man is smart enough to pull Nicky to him and threaten him with the knife, using him as a human shield, putting them at an impasse. Joe senses Nile and Booker moving, but they both pause when Merrick shakes Nicky and demands they stop.

"We cannot risk disrupting the ritual!" he sneers, dragging Nicky further over to protect Kozak as well.

An ear-shattering scream splits the air, and a body thumps out of the coffin.

Merrick flinches, cutting Nicky's neck. Nicky yelps and Joe barely holds off pulling the trigger on the gun in time out of sheer reflex. Nile and Booker both jump forwards but this time it is not Merrick's voice but something else that stops them.

Quỳnh tumbles into Andy's arms and spasms, coughing up bellyfulls of water that drip and seep all over the floor. She just keeps going, saturated with it, but perfectly, bizarrely alive. Her eyes lock with Joe's and he _sees her_.

_We were reaching always reaching from the bottom of the lake to the light to the lighthouse to get home. We never thought we would get home. We tried to warn you tried to warn them all but-_

_It is here_.

"Joe?" Booker shouts. The water that had come from Quỳnh is rising around their ankles, a dingy, sickly green that should not visibly be that colour considering the only light in the place is coming from a strong lantern on the table.

"Andy!" Nile screams, as the water suddenly picks up pace. Merrick and Kozak scramble past them to the stairs, Kozak still frantically reading. Merrick snaps something at her but Joe cannot hear it, not when Nicky is being dragged with them, away from Joe. He throws himself at Merrick on the way past and barrels into him and Nicky, flinging them all off the stairs into the rising water. The gun is lost in a heartbeat but so is the knife. Joe only focuses on avoiding hitting Nicky as he thrashes with Merrick, trying to make the man _stay down_.

And the water rises, and rises.

"Andy we have to go, grab her and let's go!" Nile's voice cuts over the chaos, the competing sounds. Joe only hears it in the moment he tears away from Merrick after a blow to the nose, and then dives back in and loses track again, rolling and trying to fight with every dirty move he can think of. Nicky is gone, left behind in their brawling, but they carry on.

* * *

The only thing Nile can see is water. Water everywhere, a strange, lit water that she does not trust for a moment. Quỳnh's boots are as sodden as the woman herself, and then so are her trousers, her knees, her thighs…

It seems to take only the space of moments before they all start to float. Splashes and gasps and Joe shouting Nicky’s name behind her tell her Joe and Merrick are parting from their fight, while Kozak keeps reading from the top of the stairs. But where is Andy?

"Book, find Andy!" she shouts over to him, trying to swim to Kozak and shut her up. Without hesitating, because he is so much braver than he knows, he takes a breath and dives under the water. He resurfaces once, twice without her, and on the third time his head breaks the surface he is dragging not one but two limp heads up on his shoulders. He yells, and Nile looks between Kozak, lifting her pages high above the water; and Booker struggling to keep the other two up. She curses and throws herself back towards him. He passes her Quỳnh, and Nile sinks like a stone.

In the muffled quiet under the water everything seems calmer somehow. Until Quỳnh's eyes open and she smiles. The world goes sideways, rushing in from all sides to spin sickeningly on its axis and reorientate. It never quite balances again.

Quỳnh's mouth opens, wide and then _wider_. Nile flinches away but Quỳnh's lead weight turns to a grip that cannot be broken, holding onto her arms. She _screams,_ a sound larger than a human can make, sending Nile bowling back to be pressed to the stone wall. Nile knows without looking that the others are caught just the same way, squeezed by an invisible force and held in place. The water is thick enough to choke on, curiously probing down her throat and into her lungs to curl up like smoke, and yet somehow she is not drowning.

Without warning Quỳnh's face appears in front of her, eyes large and black from iris to sclera. The sourceless light of the water reveals long tendrils of inky black that seem to be puppeteering her, tendrils that wind up from the trapdoor hole in the floor towards them all. They test and probe filling more and more of the room. Three - or perhaps one or perhaps a hundred, Nile's eyes are simply not relaying the right signals to her mind anymore - come towards Nile and then veer off towards someone to her right. She feels the vibrations of their howling and thrashing through the water, but cannot turn her head even the slightest amount to look and see who it is.

Not until the tendrils start to _drag_ , that is.

Joe drops to the ground and fights like the madman they had all accused him of being, seemingly unbound from the invisible force that holds the rest of them fast to the wall. _Nicky must be screaming_ , Nile thinks distantly. _Merrick must be delighted._

“Please, please don’t do this, remember who you are, fight it off, do something! You were a person once, I have to believe, to hope that you can be again-” Nile tries, unable to hear her own voice through the water. She thinks she might be making headway when those terrifying eyes turn her way...

But then Quỳnh is moving, the tendrils floating her along like a child bobbing a toy in a bathtub. She vanishes from sight and Nile closes her eyes with a whimper and _prays_.

* * *

"Take me, take me, take me," Andy says into the silence of the water. "Take me, take me, _take me, take me-_ "

She sees Joe's slow progress over the floor. It feels like the world slows down just for that, Joe's struggles sluggish against the water already, turning to impossibly lazy flailing as the coffin, or the lake, or the creature takes him. How could she decide which it is? Does it even particularly matter? They are one and the same now.

"Take me."

Quỳnh's inanimate yet animated face floats into her field of vision. Her hair, just as long and luxurious as ever, drifts around her face.

Andy lifts a hand, finding it surprisingly free, and pushes it back. Then she lifts the other and does the same, holding Quỳnh's head between her hands.

"Take me, let me lie beside her forever, in exchange for their lives. Better yet take me and let her live as well, and heal with Sébastien. Let them all go, let them live. Take me. Please."

She gently tips her forehead down to rest on Quỳnh’s, trying to pour every last tiny grain of her love and desperation into it.

Quỳnh, or the creature controlling Quỳnh, goes _wild_. 

A blast of not-sound slams into her like a hammer, but Andy resists it, fighting with all her remaining willpower and the last of the strength in her to keep holding on. Quỳnh starts to writhe, trying to break free, tugging weakly at Andy's wrists. Against her palms and forehead Quỳnh's skin starts to feel warm - is that real or is it just her wishful thinking?

The same dark black that is taking Joe lashes out in its sudden flurry of aggressiveness and ensnares Nicky, almost as though by accident, and beyond Quỳnh's screeching, contorted face Andy sees how he does not fight, reaching for Joe instead. Joe's face turns determined after it sloughs off the initial horror, and he pushes at Nicky, shouting silently and trying to beat him to the trapdoor, probably howling exactly the same words that thrum through Andy's very core.

She closes her eyes again. "Why is it always the lovers?" she wonders, out loud or as out loud as she can with a chest full of water. "So unkind, to part those who would rather die together than be parted. Take me, take me, part us and take me and give them all back to the light of day."

A piece of paper floats by, Kozak's neatly inked notes bled from it by now. Quỳnh's fingers curl around her wrists and slowly pull, trying with renewed force to peel her away. In the corner of her eye Andy sees Booker go falling to the floor, dragged towards the others as another lashing _thing_ catches him on the way past and latches on. Andy ignores them, focused on Quỳnh. That is the only thing she can do. She can focus on Quỳnh. "Give them back, just take me," she murmurs, thumbs stroking Quỳnh's skin tenderly, although she is growing ever more sure that Quỳnh is not - _if she ever was_ \- in there.

The water seems to darken - or perhaps it is Andy's vision, her eyes starting to fade as the lack of air finally registers, belatedly sinking into her sluggish brain.

Whatever has Quỳnh snarls at her and this time the not-sound that blows through the water shakes the entire room for so long Andy fears it might never stop, rattling every bone in her body with an agony beyond belief. Nicky and Joe both flatten to the floor with the force of it, fingers brushing, and Nile slams down from the wall, thrown over the floor into Booker's side, the four of them crumpling together, limp.

Andy feels the room saturate with _otherness_ , a vast something that is somehow both there and not. She wants to throw up. She wants to cry. She wants to tear her own eyeballs out and dig her fingers into her ears until they bleed, rip her tongue from her mouth and carve her own nerves from her body _so it will stop_. The unconscious ones suddenly seem lucky.

Kozak is not.

She had apparently found the knife Merrick had been using earlier. Somehow the blood surrounding her as she slowly stops moving, floating overhead at the top of the room, is being held at bay by the dark inkiness, warded off by it. It feels less awful to look at her sliced eyes and face, her empty, red mouth than the black things, if Andy is honest, her scattered thoughts clinging to the reality of blood in the water while nothing else quite seems to make sense anymore.

The noise still does not stop, pointed as though Andy has enraged it somehow, but by the time Kozak stops twitching she at last finds her muscles sapped of energy, and her hands fall away from Quỳnh’s face to her sides.

Quỳnh clutches at her cheeks and shoots backwards, screaming and writhing like a snake in the throes of death. She comes to an abrupt stop a little way away from Andy, eyes focused elsewhere, fixing on a new prey. The inattention apparently severs some kind of hold on Andy, allowing her to drop to the bottom of the flooded room. She makes quick work of the opportunity and tugs Nile and Booker over towards the stairs as quickly and unobtrusively as she can, going back for Joe and Nicky. The darkness, tentacles, arms, all fall away from her friends one by one and coalesce into one thicker black shape that Andy can barely see through.

Just before it turns opaque it goes shooting over their heads and straight at Stephen Merrick.

Horrifyingly, he is somehow not dead by the time it drags him to the trapdoor, the water emptying down as it goes. They all jolt back to consciousness as air hits their faces. Joe and Nicky splutter and cough and catch each other, stumbling over to where Nile and Booker are doing the same. Andy would go to them but _Quỳnh-_

Quỳnh is flat on the ground, a puppet with her strings cut, seemingly abandoned by the foul thing but still being tugged along by an ankle. Her arms trail along behind her and Andy lunges. _This time you will not take her from me_ , she thinks, or maybe she howls it. She tries and tries to pull Quỳnh free, screaming with new air in her lungs, but the grip is too tight and the force too inexorable until-

"Andy, catch!" Booker yells. He throws his dagger.

Andy catches it.

With one vicious, desperate slash she somehow cleaves straight through the thing that has Quỳnh, cutting her free, not for a second expecting Quỳnh to gasp awake and start to cough like the rest. But she _does_ , and Andy cannot even react to the sight of it before Merrick starts to howl; keeps howling for her to help _him_ as well as his splintered fingernails rip away on the stone floor, trying to grasp onto something to keep from being swallowed whole.

She has seconds to act.

And wastes all of them by turning to help Quỳnh up onto unsteady feet, while Stephen Merrick (the last of the Merricks, though she does not know it yet) slips down into the lake with a final, indignant burble.

At the very last moment he lunges for her ankle. 

Before she can blink the second dagger goes hurtling past to land squarely in his forehead with a meaty thunk and a crack of bone, Nile's aim perfectly true, and perfectly timed.

He slips under without another sound and the room returns to something approaching normal.

 _Better than normal_ , Andy thinks. Because from the safety of her arms Quỳnh looks up at her, laying a hand on her cheek and squinting at her through the exhaustion of… Coming back to life? Andy snorts, slightly hysterical. "Is it gone? Is it far away?" Quỳnh asks in a voice like the lake floor, heavy and drifting and clogged.

"It is. It is."

* * *

The stone underfoot is too dry. Not actually dry, but certainly no more damp than it had been before the mind-bending flooding, despite the water still dripping from them all. The iron maiden, hung in place and conspicuously empty, is bone dry, and off to one side the floor turns slick but with blood, Doctor Kozak's body turned mercifully away from them. 

Good. There is only one face Booker wants to look at right now, only one woman in the room he wants to spare a thought for and that is the woman shivering and alive in Andy's arms.

" _Quỳnh_ ," he says, voice breaking. She looks at him and smiles, holding her hand out. Andy does not look away from her for a moment but he senses, from the soft line of her shoulder and the tenderness of her smile, that she will allow this. He falls into them gratefully, surprised to find he can cry tears of salt when all the rest of him is purging freshwater.

Over Quỳnh's head he meets Andy's gaze, and she nods once, holding the dagger out for him to take. He pockets it quickly, and thinks of Nile.

Nile!

She is there, waterlogged but smiling through her trembling, watching them. The embrace he wraps her in is returned immediately, clinging on tight. They might _both_ be crying, but who could tell and who would judge? Joe and Nicky are just the same beside them when they all join together, Joe tugging them in with a loud cry of relief that is almost a laugh. Nicky's arms are gloveless, and the rest of his outer layers of robes are quickly discarded when they all part again, dropping onto the floor with a vindictive fling. Joe takes his hand and they walk out of the door into the night, shivering but alive.

Only it is no longer night, but the light of pre-dawn that he sees beyond them through the doorway. It should be impossible for so much time to have passed when it had felt like so little, and yet stranger things have already happened. Booker pointedly does not think of trouble to come with the Church - cheated of their ceremony and ritual sacrifice for the night. That is a problem for outside the hellish grave of a room they have been trapped in.

He nudges Nile to go next, and she does, with a quick glance at the corpse in the corner. "We did not do that," he reminds her softly, so that her expression clears and she walks out with her head held high.

"Can I help?" Booker says then, turning back to Quỳnh and Andy. They both look like they will struggle to go anywhere at all. Andy turns out to be worse off than Quỳnh somehow, and she allows him to slip under her arm with only a soft grumble about getting old.

"You have aged well," Booker teases gently. It is worth it when she smiles faintly at him, breaking into a wet chuckle that ends with a cough.

They are not unscathed, but they are, miraculously, alive. Anything else is secondary.

It really does appear to be near to dawn when they reach the walkway outside, shutting the door firmly closed. There are no clouds for once, and the colours are beautiful, rich deep purple lightening into oncoming blue. Stars glitter up above, watching down with new eyes on the town so often obscured from view. It might be a cliché to say it feels like he is seeing the place with new eyes but that is exactly how it feels.

From the way the others have stopped to gaze up, he thinks they feel much the same way.

"Come on, I need to sleep and get dry. And hide away, before your angry Church can find-"

Joe, both the head of the group of them as they slowly traverse the walkway around, hand thrown back for Nicky to hold, and the one to speak up, breaks off suddenly. Booker cannot see what he is looking at from his place at the back of the line, but can guess that silence in this case is unlikely to be a good sign.

The six of them reach the jetty, climbing off the walkway onto firmer ground, and Booker sees why.

There is a group of rather angry looking priests awaiting them. Although, the sight of them - especially when Nicky steps forwards with his clothes missing, still dripping - appears to overcome that anger temporarily. One of the older priests meets Nicky in the middle of the two groups, hissing quietly to him until he abruptly blanches and rears back, taking a few hurried steps and then ushering the rest of the priests away with a few sharp words and all but fleeing in the direction of the main church. He casts a few wide-eyed looks back over his shoulder and Nicky stands tall until they are all gone from sight.

When he sags into Joe's already waiting arms, Booker feels the same tug of gravity echoing in his own limbs. "Come," Joe murmurs, loud enough to include them all. "I hear there is a library nearby with some prime floor to rest on."

"Not very many spare clothes though," Andy points out. Quỳnh smiles, watching them as though she is drinking it all in with the express intent to learn them well enough to blend in among them. 

"Well Detective, I think we might just be past worrying about a little undress," Joe throws back over his shoulder, leaning on Nicky heavily for a few unsteady steps.

Andy smiles. Quỳnh smiles. Booker feels himself smile. He would bet that Nile, Joe and Nicky are also smiling, as they climb the bank to get to the library; their safehouse and unexpected slice of home in a town that has always been anything but.

In the end they pull all the cushions off the chairs and chaise longue onto the floor, moving the coffee table aside, and drape the ground with blankets and what dry fabrics they can find, piling in together to bask in the warmth of other friendly bodies, living, solid and _real_.

With Joe at one side and Nile on the other, Booker sleeps better than he ever has before. The same is true for them all.

* * *

The world above the water is a strange and complicated place. The very air of it itches at the skin, the light of it confuses the senses and muddles the driving instinct that she has followed for twenty years. How do you reach for the light when the light is everywhere? What then do you do, without a goal to strive for, a path to follow unerringly onwards?

Quỳnh is not sure how she feels yet, by virtue of not having felt very much for a very long time. Nevertheless she is sure that she would not give up any of the confusing, conflicting, nerve-wracking attacks on her senses now.

She awakes in the late morning, tucked into Andromache's side. When she lifts her head to look at the rest of them they are already half awake; the young woman is sitting up and yawning, scrubbing at her mouth, Booker is blinking across at Quỳnh with a tiny smile and her artist - Joe, how fascinating to have a name for him after all their years shared together - is murmuring to his priest at the far end. She looks back at Booker, aware that she is taking too long to smile and forcing the expression onto her face. He softens immediately, holding a hand out over Andromache's still sleeping body for her to clutch at.

"Good morning, mappus," he says.

That is all it takes for them both to burst into startled tears, each as surprised as the other to be wracked with sobs and wet on the cheeks. Andromache awakens to that sight, the two of them bowing over, holding hands, the young woman whose name Quỳnh must soon learn sympathetically petting Booker's shoulder.

"What the fuck?" she mutters. Quỳnh laughs, a bark of sound that is as novel to her as the crying, and drags her upright into the sprawl of contact.

Andromache goes without complaint and squeezes them both tightly.

"So, some of us have not eaten in a good long while, and since we ate most of what remained last- no, the night bef- well we thought it might be a good idea to go out and buy something for breakfast," Nile tells them, once she and Quỳnh have been introduced and Quỳnh, Booker and Andromache have taken their tight huddle to the chaise, cushions replaced. Quỳnh is laid out, legs in Booker's lap and upper half in Andromache's, covered in one of the blankets to take advantage of the warmth and softness of it and the shockingly good feeling of being horizontal. It had made her head spin at first but she has decided to lean into it until it goes away and force her strange reality to bend to her own will.

"I would murder for a cooked breakfast," Joe pipes up, looking around with a grin at the various horrified and queasy looks on the faces around him. "Too soon?" Nicky, the priest (although from what Quỳnh can tell that might be a temporary state soon to end) makes a muffled sound of distress and Joe tugs him in by the shoulders. "Ah come on, nothing was done that did not have to be done. And we are all, despite many attempts to the contrary, alive, if not entirely well. If I did not dread the thought I would invite you all to my family's house to use the kitchens there, and fetch some food along the way."

Quỳnh turns to Andromache then, because surely there is a kitchen much closer by. "Do you not still own a home?" she asks. Andromache's face does something complicated too quickly for her to parse, and she nods.

"I do. I suppose we could go there. I have to- it will need a quick clean. But we are all forgetting one important question;" she adds, frowning. "Are we safe to walk around in town? The ritual was, or was not completed - that remains unclear - but either way the Church certainly did not get their way last night."

Silence falls heavily, uncomfortable in a way the blanket covering Quỳnh's shoulders is not. Nicky clears his throat and rubs his fingers over each other until Joe catches his hand, and then he speaks up. "We will be left alone, for now. I imagine I will need to go and discuss the situation with the rest of the church soon enough, just as Yusuf will need to see his parents." Yusuf must be Joe, as he grumbles and groans under his breath at the thought. "But to go out? We should encounter no trouble."

"You can relax, Andy," Nile says softly. "The danger has passed, the enemy is gone. All that remains is to try and move forward."

Quỳnh waits and watches while Andromache struggles with that concept. _It is too much in her_ , she thinks fondly. "We will find you a new fight," she says aloud, patting Andromache's knee. "Then you will feel better."

Everyone laughs at that, although Quỳnh notices Andromache's is full of relief and gratitude, private to them alone. _Thank you,_ she mouths down at Quỳnh, prompting a fresh smile to bloom on Quỳnh's already aching cheeks.

"Alright, Quỳnh and I will go to my house and tidy up, and find you some clothes as well, I think. The rest of you,"

"We will go past the market," Booker agrees.

"And _we_ will drop by the boarding house, I think," Joe adds with a nod from Nicky. "For clothes of our own. And to ensure we have not been thrown out too, I suppose."

Nile offers to accompany them and clasps Andromache's shoulder as the four of them file slowly out of the library. The quiet that follows is pleasant, gently harbouring them from the world outside. Quỳnh closes her eyes and lets Andromache's fingers drawing slowly down through her hair, over and over, keep the lingering, finger-like shadows in her mind at bay. Although those shadows feel very far away indeed, while she is quietly cradled in this safe haven of green stone, the impenetrable fortress of protection that had hidden Joe away from her in dreams while he had stayed within its walls. She does not question it, nor does she think to mention it, but she does hope that the feeling of safety will remain when she leaves for Andromache's house despite the less unique properties of the stone it is built from. Quỳnh shivers at the thought of the tendrils of desperate, gnawing _want_ stretching out beneath the opaque waves that had coveted her for so long. Are they replete now, satisfied with their prize from last night? Was Merrick enough of a meal for them to bless the town again, and will the whole thing start again in two decades' time?

"You seem to be thinking very hard indeed down there," Andromache murmurs, in Quỳnh’s own language (strange to think of Andromache as having been in town long enough to learn it), peeling the hair on her cheek back behind her ear to peer at her face. "It has been so long since I was privy to your thoughts. Would you share them with me again?"

"Later, I think," Quỳnh replies, and sits up. "I would like to see your house again, move away from the memories. The rest is for later."

Andromache proves her worth by not questioning her for a moment, easily helping her stand and guiding them both, wrapped in what dry layers they could find, quickly along the street to her home.

It bears the distinctive atmosphere of a tomb inside. Quỳnh ought to know, seeing as she had been trapped in one for almost as long as she had been alive before entering it. What a concept to wrap the mind around - although the haziness of everything under the water is allowing most of that time to drift away, unlived and unknown and forgotten. Not an experience that can survive the bitter cold air of reality above the surface.

Clearly Andromache expects her to say something about the state of what had briefly been their home, but Quỳnh rewards unwavering support with unwavering support and simply sets to rejuvenating the place. They open the windows and blast the winter chill in, poke at cobwebs and beat the dust from the furniture. Quỳnh allows Andromache to dress her in her old clothes and when she emerges in them they share a silent moment of grief for lost time, stood in the doorway to their room, foreheads touching and eyes closed.

"Sit with me?" Quỳnh asks a little while later while they await the return of the rest of their ragtag crew. She guides Andromache down onto her favourite seat, the windows shut and the fire blazing in the hearth (although Andromache had maintained that with the lack of use of it in recent years the chimney was probably blocked and they will end up smoking themselves out of the house). "Not so much the Sheriff of Nottingham anymore, are you... Now _you_ are Marian, and I Robin of Locksley, returned from war to find the world a changed place. But we will live together in the woods and be happy again, as they were."

"That story ends horribly, may I remind you," Andromache chuckles. "Shall I help you fire your last arrow, carry it to your true resting place so that you can be buried where you belong?"

"If I shoot a last arrow before you do, carry it forever - never put it down until you find a place for us both to lay together, far away from here."

" _Quỳnh_."

"I am well aware that you are the old woman between us, however-"

"Quỳnh!"

It does Quỳnh's heart good to hear Andromache laugh again.

* * *

Breakfast has become more like lunch by the time the other four arrive at Andy's house. Nile feels more human again after a quick wash and some fresh clothes. She had left her things in the Inn, after a quick conversation with the boy at the desk had confirmed that no one expected them out. He had seemed rather confused by the questions in fact, and Nile had wondered about how easy it could be to live in a town consumed by a cult and their too-strange-to-fathom creature-god, and simply have it pass you by. Even in Elvagyodask it seemed life just went on.

While she had waited in the corridor for Joe and Nicky to return from their room - the rustling of paper indicating quite clearly what it was they were taking their time with - she had thought to herself that they had been extraordinarily lucky, but more than that; they had been incredibly well-suited to their task. A mixed group of personalities and experiences that had only come so close to failure because of a lack of time to work together, and the intervention of disbelief and missing trust. She grasps the handle of the greenstone dagger, tucked carefully into the inner lining of her coat. " _This is yours,_ " Booker had said on the library steps, offering it out to her. " _It would do my heart good to know you carry it._ " Nile had not protested, and now, as she holds onto it, she thanks him silently.

Not quite a little doll of thread, but a gesture of protection nonetheless.

"You will have an awful lot of writing to do to chronicle this," Booker says in Andy’s kitchen, pulling a sausage and mint pastry onto his plate. The crockery and cutlery is all mismatched, but clean. Cleaner, once Nicky had taken one look at Andy's efforts and clicked his tongue, elbowing her out of the way at the sink to get scrubbing.

It is giving her a strange déja vu to sit at the table where she had sat the very first evening upon arriving in town a week ago, with Andy in her mirroring position. The memory of that meeting, the dust and drink and darkness of not only the place but the woman who lived in it, is overlaid now with the brightness of this new memory. Quỳnh, eating and proclaiming every morsel to touch her lips to be the finest thing she has ever tasted. Joe, indulging her past his slight reticence, the little jitters that have his eyes sliding over her sometimes or his fingers twitching away. Nicky, quietly smiling and encouraging everyone to keep eating between talking to Booker about something philosophical sounding that very carefully never broaches the topic of faith.

Andy, watching over it all, meeting Nile's eyes from the opposite end of the table and granting her a subtle nod.

"A toast," Nile says decisively, lifting her mug of hot coffee. They raise their own, one by one, and wait. "To surviving. And to fighting cultists only to discover they may have had a point."

Booker laughs louder than any of them, requiring a swift clap on the back from Nicky when he breaks into coughing.

"And to us, for making the best team any cursed town could ask for."

"To us," they echo, with varying amounts of sincerity, bringing their mugs towards their lips. But Nile is not quite finished.

"And to… Perhaps doing so again?"

"Nile?" Joe asks, tilting his head. He exchanges a glance with Nicky as always and they both shrug, but Booker and Andy look intrigued. Quỳnh is already grinning and fidgeting in her seat.

"How many cults and strange things exist out there in the world that no one else will take seriously? It must be dozens, hundreds, thousands! Files in a dusty, silent archive. I only ever heard after the fact and it always got brushed away as madness or psychologically disturbed individuals needing to escape reality. Perhaps for some that is the case, but for others? People like Joe, or towns like this…"

She does not expect it to be Nicky who replies first when she trails off, eyes bright. "We could do some good. I do not expect I would be very, ah, appreciated by the Church if I tried to return to my work, nor do I desire to represent them anymore. It could be an option. A way to help, repay some debts."

"There is nothing to repay," Joe insists immediately, but relents when he sees the look Nicky sends him. "Either way, I need to leave this town. Regardless of what happens with the Church, the company, the rest of it…" His eyes go distant and Nile fancies she can see creeping black squirming and stretching out behind his eyes for a moment. "If nothing else I desire greatly to know if, outside of this place, my mind is my own."

Quỳnh murmurs a quick apology but he very deliberately covers her hand with his own. "I do not begrudge you the visits, my new friend. The other thing? I very much resent having hosted."

Nile grins at them, turning to Andy and Booker. Quỳnh reaches past Joe to hold Andy's quickly offered hand. "I promised you a fight, did I not?"

"You will need someone with some experience and a resumé, if you are planning on setting up anything official. It has been a long time since I lived in the world outside but I imagine that still holds true."

"Would you do it?" Nile asks plainly. Andy presses her lips together, smiling. She lifts her mug with a tilt of her head.

"And you, Book?"

Sébastien le Livre gazes back at her, back straight and eyes clear. He snorts softly, lifting his own mug again. "Give me some credit Nile, honestly," he teases, and drinks deep.

"Then it is decided. To us, and to our future."

"And to leaving Elvagyodask," Quỳnh says gleefully.

"To leaving Elvagyodask," they agree. Six mugs rise into the air and clink back down onto the table, and lunch resumes.


	10. Epilogue - Nile’s Departure

There is something about the certainty of leaving that allows for looking back in fondness. Wearing rose-tinted spectacles, perhaps, but nonetheless fondness can bloom where there has been absolutely nothing but suffering before. The sun might seem to shine brighter, or the people more pleasant. The work, should it be a job that is ending, might feel lighter, easier, more enjoyable. The entire environment seems to put on its best dress to bid a farewell in style, or perhaps entice the leaver to stay.

Elvagyodask is almost pretty when looked at over one's shoulder. The clear brightness of winter has snow settling on the tops of the mountains above, and a recent flurry has left the rooves lightly dusted as well, unusually quaint. Nile is not sure if there is any connection with their actions, but considering the childlike wonder and delight of the other five of her newly formed team, she thinks that she can allow a little coincidence to exist in the world alongside the rest.

"I am still not sure you will be any good at driving this," Nicky frets, helping to place another bag into the back of the car Joe's parents had acquired for them. After the obligatory tearful conversations and week-long attempts to both win his forgiveness (not that they had understood the reality of the situation for a single moment, vehemently decrying it as insanity before hurriedly reassuring Yusuf that they did not mean it like _that_ ), and change his mind about leaving.

"What could go wrong? It is only a stick and a pedal or two. My father was very complimentary about my abilities," Joe retorts, darting in to peck Nicky's cheek on the way past to put down the empty fuel cans, the car filled and ready for their journey out. "Besides, we only need to make it to the next town and then we will swap to the train anyway! What have you got to worry about?"

Nicky makes a face over at Nile, who privately agrees but also refuses to dampen Joe's good spirits. He has been on good form and climbing ever higher with every night he goes dreamless. Even outside the library they seem to have retreated. Nile is under no illusions that they had managed to _kill_ the thing they had fought (escaped from?), but it is certainly cowed beyond what it had been the previous time, if Joe's dreams have stopped. And the Church has been sternly addressed - by Nicky, in full Father Nicolò form, whom they now seem to believe to be some kind of blessed figure or perhaps adjutant of the thing in the lake - and informed that they _will_ be receiving a visit in twenty years time to ensure they behave themselves. Without any fish returning to the lake yet however, it seems more than likely that Elvagyodask is in its twilight years, and that before the time comes for them to return and make good on that threat the houses and streets and docks will empty, and the forest will creep back to swallow the land into obscurity.

"I would prefer if your reassurances were not 'it will be over soon'," Booker huffs, walking up to the house with his own suitcases. The car is parked outside Andy and Quỳnh's, and the two of them are inside somewhere, trying to locate a particular favourite hat of Quỳnh's that she insists she remembers leaving behind before her sacrifice. She enjoys calling it that, bluntly and in broad daylight. " _While I was sacrificed…_ " she often starts, the manic light in her eyes a little less each time they let it simply be the truth.

"Book, you said you had _one_ case! We are running out of space."

He looks sheepish. "But there were so many books."

"Booker!"

Quỳnh steps out of the house and waves, hat firmly in place. Andy rolls her eyes but is relaxed at her side. "It will be alright," she adds. "I forfeit my own case. Everything I need fits in one with Quỳnh."

"You pack light," Joe notes, nose wrinkling. He swipes the hat from Quỳnh and darts off with a bright laugh, hotly pursued. Nicky sighs and Andy claps him on the back in solidarity, joining him to help puzzle out the stack of luggage he is trying to fit into the trunk.

Nile shakes her head, own cases (containing everything she'd arrived with, minus one pair of boots and plus one lovingly cared-for green stone dagger) already buried beneath the rest. Booker comes over to stand by her while Nicky and Andy dedicate themselves to their task, shooing him away after he's dropped his cases by their feet.

"How does it feel to be leaving?" Nile asks, looking sideways at him. He smiles, watching Joe and Quỳnh tear down the street. "It has been quite a stay."

"Most definitely. It feels, I suppose it feels unbelievable, at the moment. I will not truly be able to conceive of it until we are past the trees and I can smell the air without the scent of the lake in my nose. It is a little sad to leave the library behind - I doubt they will install anyone new as librarian and the whole place will fall to ruin. I saved what I could but there will be archives and information and literature lost, of course."

His arm is solid and warm under her hand when she wraps around it, linking them together. "Then we will have to write to Joe's parents and demand it all be protected. What about the collection?"

"Ah, I perhaps, maybe, saved a few interesting items for further study…"

"The key…?" she asks. He shakes his head with a wink and Nile laughs.

* * *

Nile Freeman is not prone to flights of fancy. She prefers to believe in real, tangible things. Like women coming back from the dead, possession and prophetic dreams, and monsters in the dark that defy description and can fill a room with water that will not drown you. She is willing to admit, however, that just because she has not yet experienced a thing herself, does not mean it could not turn out to be true in the future, which is a change from her previous stance and would almost certainly grant her tenure at Miskatonic University should she explain it. Professor Copley had certainly been very overt in fishing for details of the incident that she had only hinted at - " _Should you be interested in writing it up, of course,_ " he had said, the eagerness in his voice not quite hidden by the static over the phone - but Nile has decided to keep this one for herself. For now, at least. He had taken her request for a sabbatical well after that conversation, far better than her mother will take the news of her remaining at least a while longer in Europe, once her letter arrives. Nile is somewhat dreading the response, in the fondest of ways.

The trees fly by, a little too quickly if you asked anyone in the car apart from the driver, and none of them are subtle about watching the mirrors until the break in the forest that grants a final window through to the lake and town disappears entirely.

One door closes and another opens. Nile knows intrinsically that every occupant of the roaring metal box they are careening down the road in has in that moment turned their thoughts forward to the future. Quỳnh slings her legs over Andy and Booker's in the backbench and curls up against the door to start up a conversation; Nicky takes Joe's outstretched hand over the gear stick (with a quick " _it is not safe_!" to keep up appearances); and Nile-

Nile desires to leave Elvagyodask behind her, in spirit as well as body. And - five firm friends and a lifetime of knowledge richer - she does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we come to the end. 
> 
> I could write the longest thing here, and name every single one of the brilliant, wonderful, supportive, crazy, excellent, inspiring, motivating gems I have had with me on this journey, but then we'd end up with an end note the length of the damn story because I'm effusive when I'm emotional so I'll keep it brief!
> 
> Thanks to my brilliant and lovely artist Fia! All the art can be found on Tumblr [right here at this link](https://oocfia.tumblr.com/post/642293336113381376/the-town-by-the-empty-lake-by-oldmagpie). Bouncing ideas off you, seeing the progress and having the glimpses of these characters and this world brought to life was amazingly motivating and kept me working hard to make something worthy of it all!
> 
> To the best fam a mags could have - thank you, I love you. To Rach, for being the godparent and originator of this whole idea; Polar for all the screaming and suffering through the spook; Soa for loving Booker so hard it made me love him more in return; Astra for your eyes and notes (and letting me keep my alrights); and Dani for last night's editing spree, accepting all the planning way back at the start, and letting me use DMs to host images. And all the rest of you invaluable lot for the endless support and love and keeping me going!
> 
> Side shout out to France, the best flatmate I could have, who did a significant amount of early beta work and has basically not seen me for a week while simultaneously acting as my alarm clock. I owe you big time.
> 
> Also shout out to the All and More 18+ Discord server that introduced me to the writing sprint bot and was definitely instrumental in getting a lot of this baby written and edited! Good luck to everyone I was sprinting with that has yet to finish their own Big Bang projects :D 
> 
> I hope you have enjoyed your journey to Elvagyodask!


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